The 29th ANNUAL CONFERENCE
of the
Association of Muslim Social Scientists (AMSS)
Islam and Society in the 21st Century
Cosponsored by the
Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding
13-15 October 2000
Georgetown University
Program
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Conference Report
The Twenty-Ninth Annual Conference of the Association of Muslim Social Scientists took place 13-15 October at Georgetown University in Washington, DC. The event, Islam and Society in the Twenty-First Century, was co-sponsored by the Center for Muslim Christian Understanding.
The AMSS conference was highly successful, boosting the best attendance record in years with renewed energy from the many young scholars in attendance.
The conference was an international collection of Muslim and non-Muslim scholars with eighty academic papers and over ninety participates presenting throughout the three-day event in paper sessions and roundtables. Presenters reflected upon topics concerning gender, global warming, globalization, Islamic law, Muslims in the West, cross-cultural communication, family and society, political theory, Pakistan and Afghanistan, Islamic economics, and Islamic philosophy.
The conference featured two plenary sessions that provided seminal scholars an opportunity to reflect upon issues facing Muslims in the new millennium. Islam, Pluralism, and Democracy, moderated by Dr. Kamal Hassan, (Rector, International Islamic University of Malaysia), featured Amb. Murad Hofmann, Abdel-Karim Soroush (Director, Institute of Epistemological Research, Tehran), Dr. John Voll (Georgetown University), and Dr. Mumtaz Ahmad (President of AMSS).
The second plenary session, Islam and Globalism, was moderated by Dr. AbdulHamed AbuSulayman (President, IIIT) and included Dr. Kamal Hassan, Dr. Akbar Ahmad (Princeton University), and S. Abdullah Schliefer (Director, Al-Adham Center for Media Studies, University of Cairo).
Dr. Akbar Ahmad provided the keynote address. In his address, appropriately titled, "Islam and Society in the 21st Century," Dr. Ahmad asserted that Muslims in the West have a new responsibility to uphold the essence of tolerance and justice in Islam, citing that Muslims in Western countries have both political and cultural freedom to strive for justice in the name of Islam for all of humanity. However, Muslims must contend with the epistemological challenges of negotiating the relationship between modernity, postmodern, and globalization.
The 29th Annual AMSS Conference introduced AMSS and Islamic scholarship to a new generation of Muslim scholars while building upon the hard-work of the founders of AMSS. The challenge now lies ahead for AMSS to accept the opportunities of the new millennium in providing Muslim academics a forum to reflect and implement new theoretical and pragmatic perspectives for Muslims.
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