12 September 2018
Lecture by the Nigerian Center for Arabic Research Director, On Aspects of Arab & Islamic Culture in Africa
In celebration of Muharraq Capital of Islamic Culture 2018, Bahrain Authority for Culture & Antiquities held at Al-Khalifiyah Library, on 12 September 2018, a lecture titled “The State of Arabic Islamic Culture in Africa” by Dr. Alkhidru Abdul Baaq Mohammed, President of the Nigerian Center for Arabic Research. Her Excellency Shaikha Hala bint Mohammed Al Khalifa, Director-General of Culture and Arts at BACA attended this event, as well a number of Culture Authority’s staff and a selection of intellectuals and great media and culture figures.
H.E Shaikha Hala bint Mohammed Al Khalifa expressed her appreciation and gratitude to Dr. Alkhidru Abdul Baaq Mohammed for his valued efforts to spread awareness about the importance of culture and its strong links with history and geographical location. H.E expressed her happiness to have host this lecture at Al-Khalifiyah Library, shedding lights on the importance and the present status of Arab and Islamic culture and the Bahraini society’s awareness. The Arabic language, the repository of the categories of consciousness and the moulder of its forms, received a radical and decisive influence from Islam. The Islamic revelation gave Arabic a new crystallization, new categories of thought, new conceptual forms, new terms, concepts and meanings. Islam gave an Arabic body to the literary sublime, and set it as the unsurpassable ideal of the art of letters, he added.
Dr. Alkhidru Abdul Baaq, for his part, lauded the efforts deployed by Bahrain Authority for Culture & Antiquities and its constant keenness to provide the valued-added educational programs aimed at social enlightenment and intellectual awareness.
Then, Dr. Alkhidru Abdul Baaq started his lecture shedding lights on many important issues related to culture and its relation with language mainly. Indeed, education in the Muslim world and Islamic education have gained much attention in the past few years due to the perceived link between those issues and concerns for development and security in the Muslim world and beyond. Dr. Al-Khidr added that the Arabic language and Arabic culture was spread with Islam. But even so a concept of ethnic nationalism, with a common language, never really developed, nor did the notion of territorial nations defined by formal borders. What existed were mainly Muslim-ruled cities and their hinterlands. In fact, dialogue between cultures was and remains the main road for the development of human civilization. Through the reciprocal understanding and interpretation of cultures over the centuries and millennia, those cultures have been mutually enriched, and so have made up the unique mosaic of human civilization, he added. Many schools and universities in Africa also have become a common denominator for culture united Arab-African relations. In the modern times, Islamic revivalism and Arab nationalism are both given a specific Arab accent according to the cultural climate of the Arab nation –state. On the other hand, the term “African Culture” has a life of its own, so to speak; that is, it is a continuum of human behavior, material things used as an integral part of this behavior, and historical events in a cause and effect relationship; it flows down through time from one generation to another and accounts for the major historical movements on the African continent as a whole over the past 7,000 years
Dr. Al-Khidr also dealt with the duality of Arabs and Islam in the African context , with a special focus on the Southern part of the African continent with all its interior and exterior elements that challenge and affect the Arabic culture generally in this part of the world.
At the end of his lecture, Dr. Alkhidru Abdul Baaq, presented a number of recommendations and guidelines that help enhance the Arab culture in Africa ( Sub-Sahara region). He said that African culture encourages creativity and promotes political or ideological significance, entertainment and aesthetic value in the Arts of sub-Saharan Africa. It is difficult to give a useful summary of the main characteristics of the arts of sub-Saharan Africa. The variety of forms and practices is so great that the attempt to do so results in a series of statements that turn out to be just as true, for example, of Western art. Thus, some African arts are found to have value as entertainment; some have political or ideological significance; some are instrumental in a ritual context; and some have aesthetic value in themselves. An urgent need to create an authority or a counsel for Arab –African Cultural affairs, gathering Arab officials together with a selection of Arab culture elite in different African countries, in many disciplines, under the supervision and auspices of the Arab League.
