MIDDLE EAST STUDIES DIRECTOR TO BE KEYNOTE SPEAKER AT CONFERENCE FOR WORLD RELIGIOUS LEADERS

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. - Vincent Cornell, Director of Middle East Studies and the newly appointed Chair of the Religious Studies Program at the University of Arkansas, will give the keynote address during a conference of world religious leaders in Seville, Spain on December 14-17, 2003. The meeting, which is being hosted by the President of Andalusia and the Mayor and Municipality of Seville, was organized by the Jerusalem-based Elijah School for the Study of Wisdom in World Religions in cooperation with the faculty of Religious Studies at McGill University in Montreal and the King Fahd Center for Middle East and Islamic Studies at the University of Arkansas.

A planning meeting for the conference was held at the University of Arkansas in spring 2002. Leaders of Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism will attend the conference, which is organized around the subject of "Religion, Society, and the Other: Hostility, Hospitality, and the Hope of Human Flourishing." The leaders will discuss critical papers on this subject prepared by members of the Elijah Interfaith Academy Think Tank.

Participants and those attending include Dr. Abdurrahman Wahid, former President of Indonesia, Chief Rabbi Shlomo Amar of Israel, Sri Sri Ravi Shankar of India, Dharma Master Hsin-Tao of Taiwan, Cardinal Carlos Amigo Vallejo O.F.M. of Spain, and the Venerable Phra Thepsophon of Thailand. Other religious leaders, including The Dalai Lama and Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, will be sending senior representatives to the conference.

Professor Cornell, who is a member of the Elijah Think Tank, will give his keynote address on Convivencia (Coexistence) in medieval Spain. He will also present the paper "Islam: Theological Hostility and the Problem of Difference" for consideration and discussion by the religious leaders. Other Think Tank members presenting papers include Rabbi Dr. Alon Goshen-Gottstein, Director of the Elijah School (Judaism), Bishop Dr. Stephen W. Sykes, University of Durham (Christianity), Ashok Vohra, New Delhi University (Hinduism), and Richard P. Hayes, University of New Mexico (Buddhism). Rkia E. Cornell, Research Associate Professor of Arabic at the University of Arkansas, will lecture to the attendees on the Islamic conception of love at Madinat al-Zahra', the medieval palace of the Caliphs of Islamic Spain in Cordoba.

# # #

###

 Vincent Cornell, director, King Fahd Center for Middle East and Islamic Studies, J. William Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences, 479-575-4157, vcornell@uark.edu

Lynn Fisher, director of communications, Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences, 479-575-7272, lfisher@uark.edu