The fourth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks on the US will be marked at NUI Galway this weekend with an international debate on the social, political and religious dimensions of Islam.
Some of the most influential writers and commentators on Islam will participate in a two-day conference at NUI Galway's Irish Centre for Human Rights, culminating in a round-table discussion on Sunday.
Topics on the agenda include challenges to the Muslim world post September 11th, 2001; the question of democracy in Islam; the rights of non-Muslims and women within Islam; and attempts to create a civic Islamic society.
Conference director Kathleen Cavanaugh said the conference aimed to "challenge and move beyond the stereotypes that currently grip the discourse on Islam-terrorism, enforced democracy building, Islamophobia, and militant regimes".
Dr Cavanaugh said there was an urgent need to "reframe the debates and the narratives that have enveloped the discourse on Islam, especially post September 11th - the twinning of Islam and violence, the arguments that there cannot be faith in democracy, the notion that there is a 'clash of civilisations'."
Islam's "best kept secret" was the fact that change was under way in certain states, such as Malaysia, Morocco and Turkey, where civil society had tried to address questions of democracy and gender equality.
Speakers will include Tariq Ramadan, recently appointed by British prime minister Tony Blair to a government taskforce on Islamic extremism in Britain.
Prof Ramadan, who has written and spoken extensively on Islamic issues, is a grandson of Hassan al-Banna, founder of the Muslim brotherhood in 1928. He lectures in Islamic studies at Freiburg university, Switzerland.
Last year he was refused entry to the US to take up a post as professor of religion conflict and peacebuilding at the University of Notre Dame.
Also taking part is Mehrangiz Kar, an Iranian lawyer and writer specialising in women's rights and family law, who is currently a visiting scholar at the Radcliffe Institute at Harvard University in the US.
She came to worldwide attention in 2000 when she was imprisoned for expressing critical views about Iran's legal system while at an international conference in Berlin.
In 2001 she left for the US after her release on bail but her husband, 73-year-old journalist Siamak Pourzand, was tried and sentenced to eight years in prison for charges widely thought to be politically motivated.
The conference opens in Galway today and further details are on www.reframingislam.org
