Isaura Daniel*
São Paulo – The Foreign Relations vice president at the Arab Brazilian Chamber of Commerce and Professor at the University São Paulo (USP), Helmi Mohammed Ibraim Nasr, is the first Brazilian ever to become part of the executive board for the International Meeting of Muslim Scholars and Thinkers. The Professor was invited to join the group by the World Muslim League, in charge of promoting the meeting. Helmi Nasr was born in Egypt, but has lived in Brazil since 1962 and is a naturalised Brazilian. The purpose of the meeting is for Muslim thinkers from different parts of the world to discuss Muslim society.
The Professor participated as a guest in the first edition of the meeting, in March and April last year, in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, where the headquarters of the League are also located. The League invited the Professor after the meeting. Nasr will join the board along with 20 other people, mostly Sheikhs, from Jordan, Indonesia, Uzbekistan, Iran, Pakistan, Turkey, Syria, Kuwait, Lebanon, India, Austria, the United States, Great Britain, Bosnia, France, Algeria, Sudan, Egypt, Morocco and Nigeria.
The theme of the last meeting was the unity of the Muslim nation. As a member of the board, Helmi Nasr has already been invited to give his opinion regarding the dates for the next meeting, themes to be discussed, and people to be invited. The meeting was designed for religious intellectuals to discuss social problems in Muslim countries, and also to devise solutions for them. Subjects to be discussed, according to Nasr, will include education, the social situation of women and adolescents, and defending Islam against terrorism.
Nasr was selected by the League to join the group due to his work in propagating the Muslim religion and culture. "To me it came as a good surprise. Few people in the world are members of this board. This is the first time that Latin America, more specifically Brazil, has a member in the board," the Professor said. Nasr translated the Koran from Arabic into Portuguese. The Professor also founded the department of Arabic Language at the School of Philosophy, Letters and Human Sciences at USP.
The Koran as translated by the Professor was acknowledged by the World Muslim League, and became available to Brazilians in October 2005. It was printed at the King Fahd Complex, in Medina, Saudi Arabia. The Complex is where translations are made in compliance with the criteria of the League. Nasr is also the author of the first Arabic-Portuguese dictionary, edited by the Arab Brazilian Chamber and released during the first Summit of Arab and South American Countries, held in May 2005 in the Brazilian capital Brasília. He also translated, from Portuguese into Arabic, the book "Novo Mundo nos Trópicos" (New World in the Tropics), by sociologist Gilberto Freyre, from the northeastern Brazilian state of Pernambuco.
In addition to Nasr, also participating in the executive board for the International Meeting of Muslim Scholars and Thinkers are the likes of Ahmad Mohamed Hilaiel, judge of judges from Jordan, Mohamed Saied Tantáui, member of the Higher Council of Mosques and Sheikh of the Al-Azhar Mosque, from Egypt, Ahmad Jaballa, director of the European Institute of Human Sciences in France, Suheib Hassan Abdel-Ghaffár, the president of the Muslim Law Council in Great Britain, Mahmud Ahmad Gházi, the president of the Muslim University in Islamabad, in Pakistan, and Badr Al-Hassan Al-Qassemi, vice president of the Muslim-India Academy of Theology.
*Translated by Gabriel Pomerancblum
