The Muhammad Bin Hamad Al Thani Centre for Muslim Contribution to Civilisation (CMCC) at the Qatar Faculty of Islamic Studies, a college of Hamad Bin Khalifa University (HBKU), will be participating in the London Book Fair for the first time this year.
The fair is scheduled to take place from April 12 to 14 in Olympia, London, where the centre will display its English publications under its series “Great Books of Islamic Civilisation.”
Established with the aim of providing non-Arabic speakers with access to scholarly works which underscore the contributions Muslims have made to human civilisation, the CMCC has translated a number of major works by Muslim scholars, spanning the period from the 1st to the 9th century AH.
The “Great Books of Islamic Civilisation” series covers a wide range of subjects such as law, theology, jurisprudence, history and politics, literature, medicine, astronomy, optics and geography. These books are authoritative sources in their fields, with each published by the English publishing house Garnet.
CMCC participated in a similar book fair in October 2014 in Frankfurt, Germany, at which Dr Aisha al-Mannai, director of the Centre, spoke about the ‘Contribution of Qatar in the Dialogue of Civilisations.’ CMCC’s series of translated texts has generated a number of positive reviews from the international community, inspiring the Centre to consider developing additional translations of its books into French, Spanish, German and Chinese.
“I am proud to see the Muhammad Bin Hamad Al Thani Centre for Muslim Contribution to Civilisation participating in the London Book Fair this year,” al-Mannai said. “The Great Books of Islamic Civilisation series highlights the contributions of Islamic scholars to science and philosophy and constitutes a whole library of informative and enlightening Islamic scholastic works.”
The books translated by the CMCC have been successful in correcting a number of misconceptions about Islam and Muslim civilisations.