Description
Join us for a live podcast recording as host, Muhammad Jalal, meets Ahmed Paul Keeler to recount his fascinating life journey, from an idyllic childhood in Windsor to navigating trauma in English boarding schools, embracing modern art and theatre, and ultimately to finding solace in Islam.
As a teen, Keeler organised plays and later established the groundbreaking Signals Gallery, promoting kinetic art. His crowning achievement was the World of Islam Festival in 1976, followed by various projects promoting Islamic civilisation and cultural dialogue. At 70, he penned Rethinking Islam and the West, questioning society’s obsession with progress andadvocating for balance, explored further in his companion volume, A Life’s Journey.
Enjoy discovering the ideas and experiences that informed Ahmed Paul Keeler’s book Rethinking islam & the West.
Related Book
A Life’s Journey: the Story behind a Book
A Life’s Journey: the Story behind a Book
Shop on WaterstonesAbout the Author
Ahmed Paul Keeler
Ahmed Paul Keeler was born in 1942 and christened Paul Godfrey. He was brought up during the 1940s and 50s in a conservative, upper middle-class, Anglo-Catholic family. A chance meeting with a master musician from India introduced him to a wonderful new cultural realm; in response he formulated and organised The World of Islam Festival that took place in London in 1976, was opened by Her Majesty the Queen, and was the most comprehensive exposition of Islamic culture ever to have taken place in the West. Six months before the festival opened Paul embraced Islam.
He is now lecturing and participating in seminars encouraging us to judge the success of human culture through the criteria of Mizan, which is at the heart of the Islamic unfolding. Ahmed Paul Keeler was Distinguished Fellow at USIM Faculty of Leadership and Management in Malaysia in 2016, was a Visiting Fellow at Cambridge University from 2014 to 2023, and is presently a Professorial Research Associate at SOAS, University of London. He has also received an Honorary Doctorate from Bolton University.
About the Chair
Muhammad Jalal
Muhammad Jalal is an educator and political scientist and is the host of The Thinking Muslim podcast. He delivers a regular course for young Muslims exploring the thoughts of Islam and Liberalism. He writes for numerous online journals.
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