Seeing Others: Empathy and Islam – Video Series

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.