Knowledge does not have affiliations

“Let me cordially thank all of you on behalf of the Expert council of the RC at HII, for your presence and your participation in our event here today, which is important and significant because of the nature of the topic which is going to be analyzed. But it is also important due to the manifestation of this good will for partnership and scientific cooperation in the different disciplines”, said Dr. Arif Abdullah, a Head of RC. According to him this is an occasion which gives us hope for future joint participation in other projects, and also makes us think that the partnership between us is not a partnership between two mutually exclusive paradigms of knowledge secular and religious, but one interdisciplinary partnership.
“Knowledge does not have affiliation, knowledge is universal and belongs to this one, who acquires it. And it distinguishes with its strong convincing argument in its objectivity”, further said the Head of the RC. According to him it is a historical fact that during the Middle Ages a great pressure was exerted on behalf of religion against scholars and science, even a crime, based attitude that knowledge cannot be other but a religious. This historical fact undoubtedly burdens to the conscious of the scientific religious will. From the counter position which is claimed and is tried to be imposed that there is no other objective model for knowledge beside the secular academician and this is a position which barely could be accepted exactly. For centuries among the famous Abbasids scientific debates where the only criterion is the sound convincing argument, the Muslims live in one intellectual stagnation, intellectual standstill, where science again is determined based on religious sign. In 1882 the famous for all of you or for most of you Jamaladdin Al Afghani said in his lecture: “The strangest one from all the things is that our scientists classify the knowledge in two basic categories Muslim science and European science, which makes many of us to be deprived from the useful knowledge which one can gain”.
Islam must not be presented as a cheap propaganda
“I would like to send you special regards and wishes for success in the conference from the Rector of the University of Sofia Prof. Ivan Ilchev and of course from me. Beside as a Dean of a faculty I feel also as your colleague, who tempted by the problems of translations, a man who faced these problems, tried to solve them alone”, said Prof. PhD Tsvetan Teofanov, a Dean of the Faculty of Classical and Modern Philology at the University of Sofia in his welcoming speech.
According to him Islam should be considered from a contemporary point of view. It must not be presented as a cheap propaganda, it does not need that. It must not be presented by shallow clichés devoided of content.
“I am very glad that in this conference participate some of the most brilliant specialists in this field. The topics which will be presented to you can be summarized in two main directions and in two main topics. The first of them is the terminology and the second main topic is transcription. Of course it goes out of these frameworks dimensions like transition from verbal to verbal are sought, which is very interesting and which is very important’, said the professor. He shared that when he was trying to translate the Holy Qur’an some years ago he faced mainly these to basic problems, terminology and transcription.
“But it is not only important how the Islamic literature is translated but also what Islamic literature is translated. We have presented to the Bulgarian public very small part of the great Islamic classical heritage. A huge work is ahead and I am convinced that this conference will give its very important contribution in this noble deed”, said Prof. Teofanov.
The activity of the RC is aimed at one constructive study of the Islamic religion, culture and civilization, and also provokes the role of Islam and the Muslims in the contemporary dimensions of the social life especially in Bulgaria and Europe. The national conference aims at identification of the problems related to the translations of Islamic literature into Bulgarian language, and aims to find by academician way the approaches for their solving.