At present, Islam, Muslims and news related with countries that have a majority Muslim population are the focus of a large part of the information and debates which appear every day in the media and on social networks. Frequently tied to topics involving immigration, refugees and conflicts, this information tends to be delivered with a plethora of generalizations, stereotypes and misunderstandings.

However, the 1.8 billion people who are estimated to make up today’s Muslim population around the world live in very diverse geographic locations and environments, which is in turn reflected in very different ways of understanding and experiencing Islam, just as there have been varying and vying schools of interpretation of religious sources throughout history, with applications and adaptations to the realities of each time having likewise been wide-ranging.

In order to provide as thorough an approach as possible, though never totally complete, to the many facets of Islam and Muslims today, the complexity of the dynamics and transformations which the Islamic world is experiencing at present, and its past and present relations with Spain and Europe, the Diplomatic School and Casa Árabe have organized this ninth edition of the course “Islam and Muslims Today: Foundations, diversity and dynamics of change.” It will be officially opened by Islamologist Rachid Benzine with this conference.

Taking part in the opening event will be Fernando Fernández-Arias Minuesa, Ambassador and Director of the Diplomatic School, Pedro Martínez-Avial, the General Director of Casa Árabe, and Eva Martínez, Director General for the Maghreb, Mediterranean and Near East at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the European Union and Cooperation (MAUC).

Conference information sheet

Rachid Benzine is an Islamologist who specializes in Qur’anic hermeneutics and a notable figure in liberal Islam in the French-speaking world. He is an associate researcher at the Paul Ricoeur Fund and has been a professor at the Institute of Political Studies in Aix-en-Provence. Some of his most notable publications include Les Nouveaux Penseurs de l’islam (The New Thinkers of Islam, 2004 and 2008), Le Coran expliqué aux jeunes (The Qur’an Explained to Youths, 2016) and, with Christian Delorme, Nous avons tant de choses à nous dire. Pour un vrai dialogue entre chrétiens et musulmans (We Have So Much to Say to Each Other: For true dialogue between Christians and Muslims, 1997) and La République, l’Église et l’islam (The Republic, the Church and Islam, 2016). He has written a book with liberal rabbi Delphine Horvilleur, Des mille et une façons d’être juif ou musulman (On the 1001 Ways to Be Jewish or Muslim, 2017). He has also published an epistolary novel and adapted it for theater, titled Lettres à Nour (Letters to Nour, 2016).