Dr. Osman Latiff

Dr. Osman Latiff is a Senior Researcher and Instructor at Sapience Institute. He has a BA in History, an MA in Crusader Studies, and has completed a PhD in the "Place of Fada'il al-Quds (Merits of Jerusalem) and Religious Poetry in the Muslim effort to recapture Jerusalem in the Crusades". He has delivered many papers in the UK and internationally at renowned academic institutions. His book on the crusades, "The Cutting Edge of the Poet’s Sword: Muslim Poetic Responses to the Crusades" was published by Brill in 2018. He has also written and continues to write academic articles and book chapters in the field of history. Further to his PhD, he conducted post-doctorate research in Politics and International Relations ("The effect of war media iconography on US identity: disruptive images, counter hegemony and political syncretism") — considering bottom-up, grassroots humanistic values and affective principles of empathy and syncretism, and the power of the visual dimension in war and conflict. His second book, on the place of empathy in challenging attitudes of otherness in human societies, entitled "On Being Human: How Islam addresses othering, dehumanisation and empathy" was published in February 2020 and launched in Christchurch New Zealand on the anniversary of the Christchurch mosque shootings (2019). His post-doctorate research was published last year, "Navigating War, Dissent and Empathy in Arab/U.S relations: Seeing Our Others in Darkened Spaces" (Springer, 2021) is a comparative, multi-modal study that helps to explain shifting self-identities within the U.S and relationally through the representation of an Arab 'other'. His most recent work, "Divine Perfection: Christianity an Islam on Sin and Salvation" (Sapience Institute, 2022) is a theological response to Christian missionaries and in particular to Dr. William Lane Craig The work sieves through centuries of Christian misrepresentation of Islam and makes the case for the maximal perfection of Allah as reflected through the doctrines of sin and salvation in Islam. Dr. Latiff is a lecturer and teacher at Jamia Masjid and Islamic Centre, Slough, and is a regular speaker at mosques and universities in the UK and internationally.
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21 Articles

The Muslim Genocide in the Heart of Europe

1 Min Read

Dr Uthman Latiff gives a haunting insight into the Srebrenica genocide which began on 11th July 1995 and became the worst massacre in Europe since WWll.

Unscripted #36 | Dehumanisation, Disney & Da’wah | Dr Uthman Lateef

1 Min Read

Join us this week on our Unscripted Podcast #36 with Sheikh Dr. Uthman Lateef.

The Spectacle of Suffering

15 Min Read

The Spectacle of Suffering & Learning to Empathise The image of Aylan Kurdi, of a forlorn three year old boy alone on a beach, flat down on his face as sea water lapped over and around him, appeared to wake the conscience of millions. We were confronted with ourselves, our weakness spoke through our tears and the isolation we saw in him drew us together in communal huddles. We felt. And in feeling we felt ourselves too, we felt for a moment what it meant to be human, to be small and weak, but our humanity extended beyond the exterior.

The Suicide of Dutch girl Noa Pothoven and Finding Light in Our Darkest Moments

21 Min Read

What outlook and remedy does Islām provide for some of our darkest and hardest moments?

Unscripted #1 | Empathy in Conflict, with Dr Uthman Lateef

1 Min Read

In the first of this new series of i21c Unscripted podcasts, where Dr Salman Butt talks to various authors about their fields of expertise, we join Dr Uthman Lateef in his home library.

Thoughts From Auschwitz

16 Min Read

Dr Uthman Lateef's reflections from his recent trip to Auschwitz...

Envy Cuts Its Own Throat

22 Min Read

In 2009, a 48 year old unmarried man, George Sodini from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania USA, walked into a gym aerobics class and began shooting, killing three women and wounding nine others before turning the gun on himself. What police initially believed was a random ‘murder-suicide’ was soon discovered to have been the carefully pre-meditated action of a man who felt spurned by women for decades. Sodini left behind a nine-month diary chronicling his grievances about being unable to find love: "The biggest problem of all is not having relationships or friends, but not being able to achieve and acquire what I

Our Children; Bullied to Death

16 Min Read

It was in the winter of 1967 when a young, bespectacled boy named Steven Shepherd left his home and walked in heavy rain to strawberry fields in Newburgh, Lancashire. The fields were important to Steven. Some months prior, Steven had an unusual and momentary break from a sequence of abuse, physical beatings and theft of property which summed up his time at his school. He had been afforded the chance to travel to the strawberry fields. It was a day of respite. His sister said that she wished she could have stopped time for her young brother as she saw him

Surah al-Buruj: a crucial lesson on human suffering

17 Min Read

“When they sat by it” Surah al-Buruj in light of Bystanding The place of ‘witnessing’ is a salient motif in Sūrah al-Burūj. At four points within the sūrah Allah draws our attention to forms of shahāda – ‘to witness’. He (subḥānahu wa ta’āla) swears by the shāhid ‘witness’ and mash-hūd ‘what is witnessed’. The criminals responsible for burning alive those who affirmed faith are shuhūd ‘witnesses’ and over all affairs, Allah is the shahīd ‘witness’. We are drawn in the sūrah to deliberate on how transgressions against others are inescapable in both a human and divine frame. Humans remember, memorialise,

“Clean War” – When Media & Militarism Meet

9 Min Read

  Tell that to the ravens plucking out eyes on the blood-packed sand To fathers cradling the last of their hopes in torn bodies To young girls swelling with the unwanted gifts of swift strong soldiers To mothers and wives pulling on veils of grief as they wash their dead Inform the children who wander dazed with thirst, alone among ruins ‘Clean War' by Patricia Wellingham-Jones The representation of the war in Iraq was reduced to the level of a video game, largely due to a combination of rigid media management by the military, the fact that much of the action