“Is Nursi’s advice in the Damascus Sermon only valuable for Muslims?”

By Fr. Thomas Michel

Senior Fellow, Alwaleed Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding and Woodstock Theological Center at Georgetown University

Saturday, April 27, 2013
7:00 pm at IITS
10359 Democracy Ln., Fairfax, VA 22030

Free and open to the public
Please register now

Refreshments will be served

 

Fr. Thomas Michel was ordained a Catholic priest of the Archdiocese of St. Louis in 1967, and entered the Society of Jesus in Indonesia in 1969. After studying Arabic and Islamic studies in Egypt and Lebanon, he received a doctorate in Islamic theology at the University of Chicago. His doctoral thesis was entitled “Ibn Taymiyya’s Al-Jawab al-Sahih: A Muslim Theologian’s Critique of Christianity.”

In 1981, Fr. Michel began work in the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue, where he became Head of the Office for relations with Muslims. He remained in the Vatican office for 13 years, until 1994, during which time he spent four years teaching an introduction to Christian theology in universities in Turkey.

Between 1994-2008 Fr. Michel served as Executive Secretary for the Office of Interreligious and Ecumenical Affairs, based in Bangkok, Thailand, and as Secretary for Interreligious Dialogue for the Jesuits, based in Rome. In 2008 he became a Visiting Fellow of the Woodstock Theological Center in Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. He continues to teach in Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines and he has published extensively on modern Muslim thinkers such as Said Nursi and Fethullah Gülen.

In 2008, he received the International Tschelebi Peace Prize from the Zentralinstitut-Islam-Archiv-Deutschland in Soest, Germany, and in 2009 he received the Ali Shir Navai Award from the International Turkish Olympiad in Ankara, Turkey. In 2010, he was awarded the degree of Doctor of Theology by the Catholic Theological Union of Chicago, Illinois.