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Under the patronage of HRH
Prince El Hassan bin Talal, the
 Royal Institute for Inter-Faith
Studies (RIIFS) in Amman and
the Pontifical Council of
Interreligious Dialogue at the Vatican City (PCID)
jointly organized a colloquium entitled "Religion
and Civil Society",
at El Hassan Science City, Jubeiha, Amman, Jordan. 18-20 May
2009.
Press: AL Rai,
21 May 2009. (In Arabic) -
الأمير
الحسن يدعو الى ميثاق بين
أتباع الديانات والمجتمع
المدني
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 The
Dialogue Institute at Temple University, the
Royal Scientific Society (RSS), Majlis El Hassan and the
Royal Institute for Inter-Faith Studies (RIIFS) held
The International
Scholars' Abrahamic Trialogue (ISAT) 2008, entitled:
"Religion and
Global Business:
Partnerships in Dialogue for the Elimination of Poverty".
26-28 May
2008 in Amman.
Press Release
(in Arabic)
Press
Clipping:
Al-Ghad
(in Arabic)
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 The Royal
Institute for Inter-Faith Studies (RIIFS) and the Regional
Program Near East/Mediterraean of the
Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, held an international conference
entitled "Religion and the Rule of Law
in the Near East", under the patronage
of HRH Prince El Hassan bin Talal on 27 and 28
February 2008, at the Royal Scientific Society (RSS), Amman.
The conference aimed to
analyse the interaction of religion, justice and
politics and to focus on the principle of the rule of
law, in order to highlight the current debate and future
prospects. Experts, politicians, lawyers as well as
representatives of international organizations and think
tanks developed perspectives on how to strengthen inter-
and intra-regional dialogue on the rule of law in the
Near and Middle East.
Program
Arabic
English
Press Releases
Arabic
English
Press Clippings
Arabic
English
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 The Royal Institute for Inter-Faith Studies
(RIIFS) and the Kawakibi Democracy
Transition Center organised an opening session and awards
ceremony of The Regional Preparatory
Roundtable for the “Fourth Ministerial
Conference of the Community of Democracies”
and the Second Preparatory Meeting of Al-Kawakibi
Chair for Democracy Transition: The Project
Finalizing Meeting, which was held
under the patronage of HRH Prince El Hassan
bin Talal on 18 June 2007 at
the Hashemite Theatre, Municipality Hall,
the Royal Scientific Society (RSS), Al-Jubaiha,
Amman.
During the ceremony, “The
Silver Olive Tree Award for Public Service”
was
presented to a number of prominent Arab
public figures who distinguished themselves
in the field of democracy.
Events Calendar
(in
English -
in Arabic)
Press releases (in
Arabic)
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 Under
the patronage of Her Royal Highness Princess
Sumaya bint El Hassan, the Royal Institute
for Inter-Faith Studies, in cooperation with
the Jordan Interfaith
Coexistence Research Center (JICRC),
the World Conference
of Religions for Peace (WCRP) and
the World Christian
Students Federation/Middle East (WSCF),
held a youth
consultation, in Arabic, entitled
"Al-ta`addudiyya
wal-ta`assub (Pluralism and fanaticism)",
17-20 May 2007. Fifty young people
from Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Egypt, Sudan and
Jordan are participating in this event.
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 The
Royal Institute for Inter-Faith Studies (RIIFS), and
the
Academy of
Latinity, held a
conference entitled "The
‘Universal’
in Human Rights: A Precondition for a Dialogue of Cultures" in Amman on 14 – 17 April 2007.
The inaugural speeches at the Opening
Ceremony were presented by Mr Omar
Maani, the Mayor of Amman; Mr
Federico Mayor, President of the Academy
of Latinity; HRH Prince El Hassan bin
Talal, Founder and Chairman of the Royal
Institute for Inter-Faith Studies; Mr
Mário Soares, Vice-President of the
Academy of Latinity; Mr Bernardino de
León, Secretary of State for Foreign
Affairs of Spain; Mr Enrique Iglesias,
Secretary-General of the Ibero-American
Secretariat; and Prof Candido Mendes,
Secretary-General of the Academy of
Latinity. Over twenty scholars from Latin
America, Europe and the Arab world participated and present papers at the
conference.
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The French Embassy in Amman, in cooperation
with the Royal Institute for Inter-Faith
Studies (RIIFS) and the European Commission
Delegation in Jordan held a two-day seminar
in Amman on
Religious Traditions and Socio-Political
Modernization
(Traditions religieuses et
modernisation socio-politique),
on 28 February and 1 March 2007. Over 35
scholars from Europe and the Arab world participated in the seminar, which
was
conducted in both French and Arabic. (By
invitation only.)
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Royal Institute for Inter-Faith Studies
(RIIFS) and The Konrad Adenauer Foundation’s
regional office in Amman, held an
international conference entitled
Religions and Reform,
on 29-30 January
2007 at the Dead Sea. Scholars from various parts of the world were invited to
debate a common approach to reform in different religious
traditions. According to Prof. Mohamed Haddad, the Coordinator
of the conference, the discussions are seen as a continuation of
the reflections conducted within the framework of the Bologna
group reform initiatives, which brought together specialists in
the three monotheistic religions, as well as in Hinduism. The
results of this meeting will help create an atmosphere that is
favorable to reform as well as allow a clearer representation of
the efforts of Muslims to engage in this debate.
Program
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 In January of 2005, RIIFS invited scholars from Iraq, the
Arab world and the West, as well as members of the general
public, to attend a four-day academic conference entitled
Iraq: Notions of the Self and the Other since the Late Ottoman
Era. The gathering was intended to begin the process of
re-evaluating the last century of Iraq’s historical, political,
economic and social development in order to dispel the many
misconceptions and misrepresentations that have become common
currency both locally and globally.
Recently, there has been intense interest in Iraq, its stability
and security, and its economic and political reconstruction.
Many conferences have been organized to discuss these subjects
in various parts of the world, particularly the West. Virtually
no thought, however, has been given to rebuilding the country
culturally, educationally and academically, that is, to
stimulating the renewal of objective academic enquiry in a
country where independent thought was stifled for decades and to
undertaking, in concert with Iraqis, fact-based research about
the Iraqi people and their past. “Iraq: Notions of the Self and
the Other since the Late Ottoman Era” represented the first step
in this process.
The conference was organized by Dr Hala Fattah, the resident
director of the American Academic Research Institute in Iraq (TAARII),
in coordination with Rawda Qarden (RIIFS). RIIFS is grateful to
the Japan Foundation (JPF) for its generous grant, which helped
to make the conference possible, and to TAARII and the Goethe
Institute in Amman for their cooperation. (Click here in order to
read press releases
and press
clippings.)
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 In
September 2004, RIIFS and the Jordan Institute of Diplomacy, in
cooperation with the Japan Foundation and the Embassy of Japan,
organized a public symposium on the theme of
Tradition and
Modernization: A Jordanian-Japanese Dialogue.
Held at
Amman’s Royal Cultural Centre, the symposium marked the 50th
anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between
Jordan and Japan, and the visit to Jordan of Japan’s Middle East
Cultural Exchange and Dialogue Mission.
(Click
here in order to read the
program,
press releases
and press clippings.)
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 In October 2003, RIIFS organized a conference on
Risk,
Complex Crises & Social Futures, which examined post-11
September perceptions of increased risk to individual and collective
security in terms of a broader transformation of social conditions
worldwide.
For some time, sociologists have been
describing the consequences of increased organizational and
technological complexity and global interconnectedness (through
communication networks, particularly television) as producing ‘risk
society’. Yet, paradoxically, as risk becomes the organizing
principle of societies, governments are less able to control global
complexity. Rather than seeking to analyze complex crises, they
respond by simplifying the issues. In the West, the state’s focus
upon the risk of terrorism and the strategy of containment neglects
the complex nature of international crises requiring global
cooperation. Not only violence, but poverty, epidemics, hunger and
global warning are all evidence of states’ neglect of or incapacity
to care for and protect their citizens, let alone assume larger
humanitarian responsibilities for non-citizens. Social problems are
becoming increasingly compounded, creating highly marginalized social
worlds. As conference organizer Professor Michael Humphrey (University
of New South Wales) noted, the risk trap only provides us with fears
about disaster, not collective solutions for humanity.
As in past years, the conference was organized
by Professor Humphrey in coordination with Rawda Qarden (RIIFS). A
selection of the papers presented and all of the abstracts have been
published in BRIIFS (Vol.
6, No. 1).
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 In October 2002, RIIFS hosted a conference to explore the relationship between
Health
and Social Justice
and to address the expanding global public health crisis as an indicator of broader social and political crisis. As the original conference proposal put it, "the growing vulnerability of millions of people to suffering caused by disease and violence is a measure of the crisis of the state in protecting and caring for citizens." Yet, not only is suffering widespread and unevenly distributed, it is differentially and selectively recognized. The extent to which human suffering is either ignored or denied is a gauge of the ethical crisis of our global age. Discourses on health and suffering are inextricably tied up with the exercise of political power, as well as perceptions of social justice.
Some conference participants presented case-studies that examined the consequences of inadequate or reduced state funding for public health programs in different geographical regions and cultures. Others explored how the paradigms and methods of the healing professions may compound problems, rather than alleviating them, for example, through the medicalization of suffering. Still others focused upon the healing of individual and collective trauma resulting from societal conflict or state violence, either by reshaping the self or the social relationships in which the self is sustained.
The intention of the conference was to further comparative and theoretical analysis of issues connected to health and social justice from a global perspective. It was organized by Professor Michael Humphrey (University of New South Wales) and
Rawda Qarden
(RIIFS). (See also
BRIIFS
Vol. 5, No. 1.)
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In August 2001, RIIFS held an international conference
on
Islam and Science. Recent years have witnessed the intensification of the discussion on, and rethinking of, the relationship between science and religion. Yet, despite numerous modern attempts to identify an Islamic stance on science (and technology) and to articulate Islamic conceptions on the relationship between science and religion, such studies remain largely disengaged from the epistemological foundations of scientific knowledge as conceived in the historical experience of Muslim societies.
This conference explored the status of science in classical and contemporary Muslim societies and Islamic conceptions of the relationship between science and religion. It was organized by Professor Ahmad Dallal (Stanford University), with the assistance of Rawda Qarden (RIIFS).
RIIFS would like to thank the Rockefeller Foundation for the generous grant that made this conference possible. (See also
BRIIFS
Vol.4, No.1.)
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In June 2001, RIIFS held an international conference on
Transnationalism:
The
Impact of Transnational Processes on the Nation-State and National
Cultures. The conference addressed questions such as: Is transnationalism generating supranational forms of social life? Have global forms of information and communication transformed ethnic cultures into transnational cultures or merely reinforced them? Are there unifying principles that are drawing peoples and societies together to form new/old identity formations and associational groupings? Where does transnationalism intersect with local nationalisms and mass culture meet with ethnocentric and parochial identities? Above all, what is 'new' and what is 'old' in the way people see themselves, their history and traditions, their societies and ideologies, and how will current conceptions of the nation-state, of nationality and of national identity endure?
This conference investigated some of these questions, among others. After a keynote address focusing upon the theoretical aspects of
transnationalism, participants presented case-studies to examine the manner and extent to which different societies and nation-states have or have not accommodated themselves to current transnationalist impulses and realities.
The conference was organized by Professor Michael Humphrey of the University of New South Wales with the assistance of Rawda Qarden (RIIFS). (See also
BRIIFS
Vol. 3, No. 2.)
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 In November 1999, the
World Conference on Religion and Peace
(WCRP) held its Seventh World
Assembly, in cooperation with RIIFS, on the theme
Global Action for Common Living: The
Role of Religions in the Next Millennium. The Assembly was held under the patronage of HM King Abdullah II of Jordan and the chairmanship of HRH Prince El Hassan bin
Talal. During the course of the Assembly, HRH Prince El Hassan was elected Moderator of the
WCRP.
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 In June 1998, the Royal Institute for
Inter-Faith Studies, in association with the Middle East Centre,
St. Antony's College, and the Centre for Lebanese Studies,
Oxford, held an international conversazione entitled
The Arab
Image in the West.
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In August 1995,
RIIFS held its first international academic conference entitled
Christian
Perceptions of Islam, Muslim Perceptions of Christianity: The
Historical Record. The conference was attended by
specialists in history and theology. Selected papers are
featured in the journal Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations,
vol. 7, nos. 1&2 (1996), published by Selly Oaks Colleges,
Birmingham, UK.
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Under the
patronage of the Sudanese president
RIIFS
and 
