Prof. Najib Awad participated in the annual conference of North American Patristic Society (NAPS) in Chicago during Memorial Day weekend. He read a paper titled “Supposedly Encountered an Arian Monk’: Where Did Muḥammad Derive his Ideas from, according to John of Damascus’s De Haeresibus, Chapter 100/101?”

Prof. Yahya Michot sends us another update from his sabbatical. On May 20, 2016, he was at the Al-Amal Mosque in Brussels for a public lecture on “L’Andalousie: une page de notre histoire.” On May 21, he spent the day at the Ligue des Musulmans de Belgique for five seminars on “Fatwas et sociétés: 1. Les fatwas à travers les époques et les contextes: 2. La musique et la danse; 3. Les drogues (hashish et opium); 4. Le café; 5. Le tabac. ”On May 22, he visited the Ligue d’Entraide Islamique – Alkhalil Mosque and gave five seminars on “Religions comparées: 1. Les religions abrahamiques; 2. Islam et Bouddhisme; 3. Islam et hindouisme; 4. Islam et monachisme; 5. Islam et syncrétisme.”

Prof. Scott Thumma is quoted extensively in this Portland Press Herald piece about the rise of nondenominational churches in Maine. “Nondenominational churches are offering an alternative product in the religious marketplace,” he said. “It’s a highly successful model at this point and it really is changing the landscape of religion in America.”

Prof. Yayhya Michot’s sabbatical leave led him from Turkey to London, where he pursued his research at the School of Oriental and African Studies and the Warburg Institute. On 14-15 May 2016, he was at the Birkbeck College, at the invitation of IslamicCourses.org, for an Advanced Avicenna (Ibn Sina) Weekend Intensive Study with Dr Jules Janssens (Leuven University). He gave four courses: 1. “Al-Shaykh al-Ra’îs”: Traditional and New Approaches; 2. Avicenna in the West, from Toledo and Venice to Oxford and New York; 3. Love and the “Order of Good”; 4. “What about the Prophets’ Miracles?” Ibn Taymiyya on the Last Section of Avicenna’s Ishârât.