Guest Lecture: Aomar Boum

"The Performance of Toleration: Communities of Tolerance and the Festivalization of Interfaith Dialogue in the Arab World"

Thursday, Feb. 23, 4:30 p.m.

This event is co-sponsored by: Historical, Philosophical and Religious Studies
Jewish Studies
College of LIberal Arts and Sciences
Location: Coor Hall 186
Campus: Tempe
Cost: Free and open to the public

This event is organized by The African Diaspora Research Group, and co-sponsored by the faculty of Religious Studies and the Center for Jewish Studies. Contact Professor Andrew Barnes, or Professor Chouki el Hamel for more information.

This talk discusses the contemporary use of the historical memory of interfaith toleration in al-Andalus by Arab leaders. It examines paradigmatic examples of the socio-cultural practice in Contemporary Morocco (other examples from Saudi Arabia, Tunisia and Jordan are cited as well). The speaker also critiques the practices as restricted to socio-political elites and as such having limited effect on the general conduct of productive interfaith interaction in the Arab world.

Dr. Aomar Boum was born and raised in the oasis of Mhamid, Foum Zguid (Province of Tata, southern Morocco). As a socio-cultural anthropologist, his main research explores how Moroccan Muslims remember, picture, and construct Jewishness and Moroccan Judaism. Dr. Boum has published a number of academic articles on the representation of Jews in Moroccan museums, the migration of Saharan Jewry toward Israel in 1962, traditional Jewish education and the Alliance Israélite Universelle in southern Moroccan oases, the performance of toleration and Judeo-Muslim symbiosis in post-independence Morocco, the relationship between Muslim judges and Jews in southern Morocco, and the history and historiography of rural Moroccan Jewry. He has written a number of entries on the Jews of southern Morocco in the Encyclopedia of Jews in the Islamic World. He also published on ethnic folkdances and nationalism, traditional Islamic and modern education, as well as Hip-hop and youth dissent in Morocco, and youth culture. He is currently working on a manuscript, “Memories of Absence: How Muslims Remember Jews in Morocco” as well as journal articles on Moroccan Jews in national movies and the national debate regarding the status of Moroccan Jews in national newspapers.