Marina Sarruf*
marina.sarruf@anba.com.br
São Paulo – The Foreign Relations vice-president at the Arab Brazilian Chamber of Commerce and Professor at the University of São Paulo (USP), Helmi Mohammed Ibraim Nasr, was invited to participate in the 1st Meeting of the Executive Board at the Meeting of Muslim Scholars and Thinkers, promoted by the World Muslim League. He will be the only representative of Latin America.
The meeting, to be held from November 12th to 15th in Mecca, the holy city for Muslims, located in Saudi Arabia, aims at discussing the problems faced by contemporary Muslim society. In total, 21 Muslim thinkers from all over the world comprised the executive board. Most of them are highest religious authorities, such as 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.
According to Nasr, the executive board is an academy of Muslim scholars, and this is the first time ever that it counts on a Latin American member. Nasr was born in Egypt, but has lived in Brazil since 1962 and is naturalized. "We are going to discuss the problems facing the Muslim world, and what solutions can be adopted," he said. According to the professor, one of the issues to be discussed is the original value of Muslim culture, which changed as years went by. "Some want to follow United States standards, others want to follow British ones, but we want to follow the original criteria of Muslim culture. We are going to discuss solutions so that we can return to the original culture, which comes from the Koran," he stated.
Early this year, Nasr was selected by the Muslim League to integrate the board for his work to propagate Muslim religion and culture in Brazil. The Professor translated the Koran, the sacred book of Muslim religion, from Arabic into Portuguese, and his version is recognised by the Muslim League. The Koran in Portuguese, which was printed at the King Fahd Complex, in Medina, Saudi Arabia, was launched in October 2005.
Besides the Koran, Nasr is also the author of the first Arabic-Portuguese dictionary, edited by the Arab Brazilian Chamber of Commerce and launched during the Summit of Arab-South American Countries, in May 2005. He also translated, from Portuguese into Arabic, the book "New World in the Tropics" (Novo Mundo nos Trópicos), by sociologist Gilberto Freyre, from the northeastern Brazilian state of Pernambuco. Nasr was also the founder of the Arabic Language department at the School of Philosophy, Languages and Human Sciences at the USP.
Members of the Executive Board at the Meeting of Muslim Scholars and Thinkers include Ahmad Mohamed Hilaiel, Judge of Judges from Jordan; Mohamed Saied Tantáui, member of the Higher Council of Mosques and sheikh at the Al-Azhar Mosque, from Egypt; Ahmad Jaballa, director at the European Institute of Human Sciences in France; Suheib Hassan Abdel-Ghaffár, president at the Muslim Law Council in Great Britain; Mahmud Ahmad Gházi, president at the International Islamic University Islamabad, in Pakistan; and Badr Al-Hassan Al-Qássemi, vice president at the Muslim-India Academy of Theology.
*Translated by Gabriel Pomerancblum
