By LOIS HASSELL
Lois@newsroom.byu.edu
BYU is building bridges between members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and Muslims, Elder Neal A. Maxwell said last week.
BYU, through the Center for Preservation of Ancient Religious Texts, published English translations for three Islamic classic books.
Last week these books were presented to a corps of United Nation under-secretaries, assistant-secretaries and other dignitaries during a reception in the United Nations Delegate Dining Room hosted by BYU and the New York Public Affairs International Program of LDS church.
At the presentation, Elder Maxwell said these books would help fight stereotyping because people would become more educated about other cultures.
"We live in a world in which there is a lot of stereotyping. Muslims know what it is to be stereotyped. Mormons know what it is to be stereotyped. We are genuinely interested in bridge building, and in this case the bridge consists in part of books," he said.
"Between Mormons and Muslims, there are many touching point, and we would like to see the touching points become bridges of understanding," Elder Maxwell said.
"These publications will fill a major gap in Western knowledge of the Middle East and the world of Islam. Up until now, these classics were assessable only to scholars who had devoted years to mastering the languages required to read them," said Daniel C. Peterson, director of BYU's Islamic Translation series, in a recent news release. LDS church public affairs committees in larger United States cities have used these texts as an opportunity to make contacts with the Muslim communities, said Morgan Davis, associate editor for CPART.
"This project has snowballed, and we are now being invited to various functions with various embassies. They see these translations as a great service to them," Davis said.
These texts, as well as others, have been translated by scholars from universities such as UCLA, the University of Toronto and Indiana University. However, the books had no publisher until now, Davis said.
With the establishment of CPART through FARMS, BYU has been able to help these works be published.
"As far as we know, we are the only ones doing these types translations," Davis said.
The three volumes already published were Al-Ghazali's "The Incoherence of the Philosophers," and "The Niche of Lights" and Suhrawardi's "The Philosophy of Illumination." To complete the Islamic Translation series, three more texts by Averroes will be released beginning spring 2000. CPART is also publishing two other scholarly text series, an Eastern Christian Text and an Arabic Scientific Text Series.
The texts are distributed by the University of Chicago press.
While copies of these texts can be found primarily at academic bookstores and other distributors of the University of Chicago Press, examples of these translations can be found at www.cpart.com/meti.
Copyright Brigham Young University 21 Feb 2000
