Start: 17.00

Ambassadors and the Worlds’s Pulse – The 1st meeting

Islam and democracy

Invited guests:

J. E. Hazairin Pohan -  the Ambassador of the Republic of Indonesia
and
Bogusław Zagórski – an Arabist

The aim of our meetings is to take up a discourse about the most important problems and transformations occurring in the modern world, such as alternations in the role of religion or in the situation of women in the society. To our discussions we invite mostly Ambassadors of various countries the knowledge about which is often stereotypical. In reality, those countries witness dynamic transformations that are too significant to regard them as local phenomena only.

Our guest at the first meeting - J. E. Hazairin Pohan – was born on 1953 in Pematang Siantar on Sumatra. He graduated from University of Northern Sumatra in Medan, where he studied law, and from Washington University, where he was a student of political sciences. Being a long-term employer of the Indonesia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Pohan was on diplomatic duty i.a. in Russia and Bulgaria. Since 2006, he has been the Ambassador of the Republic of Indonesia in Poland.

Bogusław R. Zagórski – an Arabist and Islamist, the head of Inn Khaldun Institute, and a lecturer in the Collegium Civitas in Warsaw. Postgraduate studies in Oran (Algeria), Tunis, Paris i Aarhus (Denmark). An UN expert in toponomastics and cartography of the Northern Africa and Middle East; the author of Polish transcription system of Arabic and Persian languages. The President of Executive Board of the Polish-Arab Friendship Association.

The first meeting entitled Islam and democracy will constitute a sort of a platform for the discussion of Islam perception in Poland which is mostly stereotypical. Poles automatically associate Islam with conservatism. Since in European countries, perceiving themselves to be democratic and progressive, there is an ever-growing number of citizens coming from Muslim countries, there appears a need to talk about the coexistence of various traditions and values. Is the peaceful concomitance of Islam and modern, consumptive Europe possible at all?