ISIM Cairo Meeting

Abstract

The ISIM is organizing sounding board meetings in the intellectual capitals of the Muslim world. The first of this series was held in Beirut last May. In October 1999, an ISIM delegation visited Cairo for a joint meeting with the Center for the Study of Developing Countries at the Faculty of Economics and Political Science (FEPS) of Cairo University. The ISIM delegation also visited a number of other institutes in order to explore the possibilities of cooperation, in particular in view of the collection of local printed materials. The choice for Cairo was an obvious one: the city has been a centre of Islamic learning since the early days of Islam and has been a cradle of reformist, modernist and revivalist movements in the last two centuries. This city of teeming millions has a large number of publishing houses that produce an abundance of Islamic literature, demonstrating the scholarly vitality of the city that also hosts major trends in Islam today.