DOHA: Georgetown University in Qatar (GU-Q) in collaboration with Doha International Centre for Interfaith Dialogue (DICID) and WOOLF Institute, is hosting a lecture by prominent scholar and writer Professor Karen Armstrong today.
The lecture titled “Compassion and Violence” will take place from 6.30pm to 8pm at Georgetown auditorium and will be open to public.
Professor Armstrong is a British author and commentator known for her books on religion and interfaith relations. Most recently she has published Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of Violence (2014), which deals with tackling religious violence and extremism.
The lecture will examine the complex relationship between faith and warfare and religion and politics. Besides examining the Crusades, the notion of jihad, and the so-called “Wars of Religion” in early modern Europe, it will discuss such modern explosions of religiously-articulated violence as suicide bombing and the atrocities of ISIS to discover just how central the role of religion really is in such atrocities.
The speaker will explore the inherent violence of the state against which the compassionate alternative preached by prophets, sages, mystics and even emperors could never wholly prevail.
The lecture will also show that secularism and nationalism have not been wholly irenic alternatives to the religiously organized state but have inspired some of the worst atrocities of modern times.
The Peninsula
