Dr. Loren Lybarger
Café Conversations presents Dr. Loren Lybarger on “Radical Islam’: What’s Religion Got to Do with It?” on Wednesday, March 30, at 5 p.m. in the Baker Center Front Room.
The rise of the Islamic State has once again reignited debate about whether Islam is compatible with modern political institutions founded on democracy and human rights, according to Lybarger, Associate Professor of Classics & World Religions at Ohio University. On one side are those who contend that unlike other religions, Islam has failed to reform itself and make its peace with secularity and pluralism. On the other side are those who counter that it is not Islam but modernity itself, in the form of Western imperialism, that is the problem.
Lybarger explains that “too often either too much or too little is made of religion in attempts, which are often polemical in nature, to explain groups like the Islamic State or the Branch Davidians in Waco, Texas. It makes little sense to deny that religion plays a central role in these groups, but it is also a grievous mistake to ignore wider political and historical factors that create the conditions for their emergence.”
This cafe will critically examine the terms of this debate and probe alternative ways of understanding what religion and modernity are and what gives rise to religion-related violence in different settings, globally.
Café events are free and open to students, faculty and staff. Café Conversations and Science Cafés are both venues for students to share their interests informally during a conversation exchange in a friendly setting. The Science Cafe is hosted by Dr. Sarah Wyatt, Professor of Environmental & Plant Biology and Vice President of the Ohio University Chapter of Sigma Xi. The two series are sponsored by the Ohio University chapter of Sigma Xi and the Office of the Vice President for Research. Find the Science Café on Facebook and Twitter.
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