The International Institute of Islamic Thought Intellectual Panels

Abstract

The International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT) held a series of panels at the 41st annual convention of the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA) in Baltimore, MD, on Sunday, May 29, 2016. The first panel, “Maqāṣid al-Sharī‘ah as a Philosophy of Islamic Law,” featured Jasser Auda (Al-Shatibi Chair of Maqasid Studies, the International Peace College, South Africa) and Ebrahim Rasool (Distinguished Scholar in Residence at Georgetown University’s Edmund A. Walsh School for Foreign Service and former ambassador of South Africa to the U.S.), with Ermin Sinanović (director, Research and Academic Programs, IIIT) as moderator. Sinanović began by introducing IIIT to the diverse audience. He explained that the institute is devoted to the revival of Islamic traditions and the reform of Muslim societies. In addition to affirming that our sources and principles are unchangeable, he positioned IIIT as the institution dedicated to making our intellectual legacy the core of the solution to our current malaise, for it is the “answer to the crisis of the ummah,” a crisis that is largely intellectual in nature: our inability to translate our eternal message as per our time and space ...