New Currents in the Religious Sphere with Kemal Silay, David Rosen, Ken Levine and Ahmed Abbadi.
Religious leaders come together to talk about the new currents religions have taken in current day situations.
Bio
Ahmed Abbadi
Ahmed Abbadi is currently the President of the Mohammedia League of Moroccan Ulama. In 2004, he was appointed by King Mohammed VI as the Director of Islamic Affairs in the Moroccan Ministry of Islamic Affairs, a position which he held until recently.
He is also a professor of Comparative Religion and Islamic Thought at Qadi Ayyad University in Marrakech, Morocco. In addition, he teaches as a professor of Sociology at DePaul University in Chicago, where he previously studied as a Fulbright fellow.
Ken Levine
Ken Levine is Chair of Interreligious Affairs at The American Jewish Committee.
Rabbi David Rosen
International Director of Interreligious Affairs of AJC and its Heilbrunn Institute for International Interreligious Understanding, Rabbi David Rosen serves on the leadership of several international interreligious organizations.
Formerly Chief Rabbi of Ireland, he is the immediate past Chairman of IJCIC, the International Jewish Committee on Interreligious Consultations, a broad-based coalition of Jewish organizations representing world Jewry to other religions.
Among various awards and honors, in 2005 Rabbi Rosen received a papal Knighthood, conferred on him for his contribution to Jewish-Catholic reconciliation and in 2010 he was made a CBE (Commander of the British Empire) by H.M. Queen Elizabeth II.
Kemal Silay
Kemal Silay was born in Ankara, Turkey in 1964 to a middle-class Muslim family, he was educated in public schools from the elementary to the college level. After completing his B.A. from the Department of Turkology at Ankara University in 1988, he was awarded a governmental scholarship to study abroad.
He came to the United States in 1988, where he received his M.A. in Turkic Studies from Indiana University, Bloomington in 1990, and his Ph.D. in 1993. In the Fall of 1993, he was appointed as Assistant Professor of Near Eastern Languages and Civilization at the University of Washington in Seattle. In 1997, he returned to his alma mater, Indiana University to become the holder of the Ottoman and Modern Turkish Studies Endowed Chair.