São Paulo – The online course “Contributions of the Arab-Islamic Civilization to the Humankind in a Historical Perspective” ended last week with over 13,000 participants. According to data released by Brazil’s Arab Culture Institute (ICArabe), which organized the program, 5,603 registrations were received from Brazil and 17 other countries. The classes, which occurred from February to July this year, got 3,356 participants on the Zoom platform and over 10,000 views on YouTube.
ICArabe hosted the course with support from the Arab Brazilian Chamber of Commerce (ABCC), the Arab House, and the Brazilian Sleep Institute. Twenty-one classes were taught by professors recognized in their fields of expertise. The conclusion, on July 22, included a class by the professor at the State University of Campinas (UNICAMP) and former president of ICArabe, Mohamed Habib, who lectured on “Biology and Environmental Sciences.”
Among the topics discussed were Arab contributions to domains such as medicine, architecture, physics, chemistry, mathematics, in addition to Islamic finance, Islamic law, philosophy in the medieval Islamic world, Arab music, The Thousand and One Nights, Arab immigration, medieval Islam, Arab cuisine and contemporary Arab writers.
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“This course took place amid a pandemic that claimed over 540,000 lives in Brazil. Adapting and transitioning to the fully online format was not easy for any of us, but this course proved that with dedication and will, it is possible. Despite the hard times, we had the pleasure of being able to deliver educational, scientific, and cultural content to places that, in person, we could not have reached,” said Natalia Calfat (pictured above), cultural director of ICArabe and coordinator of the course.
At the ending of the course, the president of ICArabe, Murcherd Omar Taha, and the cultural director of the ABCC, Silvia Antibas, also participated. Taha emphasized the importance of being able to show the contributions of the Arabs to the Western world. Antibas congratulated ICArabe. “Many who participated in the classes are not Arabs. Being able to publicize the contributions of Arab-Islamic civilizations to the world and reaching this audience is very important,” she said.
To watch the classes on YouTube, click here.
Translated by Elúsio Brasileiro
