COURSE 1: General Principles of Islam from the perspective of the Risale-i Nur and Hizmet
COURSE DESCRIPTION:
This course is designed mainly on Ali Unal’s seminal book General Principles in the Risale-i Nur Collection for a True Understanding of Islam and İbrahim Özübüyük’s Adanmışların Vasıfları: Hizmet İnsanının Portresi (The Attributes of the Devoted: A Portrait of the Hizmet Activist). The course concentrates on eight major principles of Islam and their modern interpretation by the Risale-i Nur and the Hizmet literature. The curriculum of the course will have the following:
- Week: How to Think and Believe as a Muslim
- Week: Reading the Qur’an into our Lives
- Week: Knowing the Prophet, His Sunnah and Hadith
- Week: How to Embody Our Belief and be Exemplary Muslims
- Week: Our Responsibilities for the Society and Islamic Action
- Week: Sincerity and Brotherhood
- Week: Altruism and Devotion to a Cause
- Week: The Dual Duties of Contemplation and Consultation
INSTRUCTOR: Dlovan Kareem
Dlovan Kareem is a graduate of Istanbul Fatih University’s theology faculty. He completed his MA in Religious Studies at what was then the Hartford Seminary — now Hartford International University for Religion and Peace. Kareem has been living in the US since 2017.
COURSE 2: Faith and Reason: How Science and the Qur’an say the same thing
COURSE DESCRIPTION:
This course designed to discuss the bridge between faith and reason and to show that the perceived gap between the two is not as unbridgable as it seems and if there are contradictions between the two this is due to our misunderstanding of one or both. The curriculum of the course is as below:
- Week: Is Religion and Philosophy Contradictory? Can there be a Philosophical Theology?
- Week: Is there Sufficient Evidence that God Exists?
- Week: What does Science and Religion say about Free-Will?
- Week: Determinism, Occasionalism and the Causality: What does the Qur’an say?
- Week: Why does Evil Exist in this World if God is All-Compassionate?
- Week: Is there a Scientific Proof for the Resurrection and the Hereafter?
- Week: Divine Names of Allah: What is the Difference from Polytheism or the Holy Trinity?
- Week: Faith and Pluralism in our Post-Modern World
INSTRUCTOR: Dr Albert Frolov
Albert Frolov is a PhD student at Regis College (Toronto School of Theology). His PhD work is in comparative and philosophical theology. He holds a Candidate of Science degree in philosophy from Kazakh National University of al-Farabi (Kazakhstan) and previously taught graduate and undergraduate courses on Islamic and World Philosophy in Suleyman Demirel University in Kazakhstan. Dr Frolov is the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Interdisciplinary Islamic Studies (JIIS), the Respect Graduate School’s academic journal.