Beirut, 23 November 2018,

The second and final day of the International Conference on "Cultural Heritage of Humanities: Perspectives and Experiences," organized by Al Maaref University, was held on Wednesday, November 21, at the Heritage Saha Village in Beirut.

The fourth focal session that the second day of the conference started with was entitled "Experiences in Cultural Emancipation". The session was chaired by Dr. Mohammed Deyfulallah Al Qatabri, President of ‘Imran’ University from Sana'a, Yemen. In the first intervention, the Iranian experience in culturalization was presented by Dr. Mohammad Saeed Mahdavi Kenny from Iran, where he presented Imam Sadiq University’s experience as a referential model for an Islamic university. He clarified that the university " had acquired an independent identity from other educational institutions in Iran." This institution is unique in the production of Islamic thoughts in Humanities and social sciences. We can consider that the outcome of its vision related to the institutions, curriculum, teachers, and learners as essential components for the determining and establishing the identity of this university.” Dr. Anwar Abu Taha from Palestine presented the "Islamicisation of Knowledge" in the work of the
International Institute of Islamic Thought. He considered that "the process of producing knowledge in various sciences had contributed to the construction of the Islamic University in Malaysia and other institutions.”

The Turkish experience was attended by  Dr. Ibrahim Pour of Turkey, who presented "the impact of Westernization on the educational system in Turkey and its consequences on society, based on historical
data." He discussed the effects of Westernization on the Ottoman Empire and modern Turkey,
highlighting some important historical events that have kept their influences on the form and content of the education system in contemporary Turkey.

The fifth focal session of the second-day of the conference dealt with the experiences in the cultural nativity. The session was chaired by Dr. Claude Alvares, the coordinator of the "University Emancipation" project from India. The first intervention was from Africa by Dr. Luutu Babuuzibwa of Uganda, entitled "African Ideas and Experiences on the Foundation of Science." The paper focused on "re-energizing all cultural and intellectual sites as well as the national languages in society so that social and academic experts can address the ‘problematic’ of technology and appropriate sciences that can deal with society’s existential challenges. " The experience of South-East Asia was presented by Dr. Sayed Farid Al-Attas entitled "Southern Theory, Freedom from Colonialism and Independent Sciences."
In his paper, Al-Attas presented the idea of "southern theory as a type of independent social science free from colonialism," for him this entails having “ a sound discussion about the concept of the South as a directive concept, which is a unique understanding of the meaning of the Southern theory as a social science that would emancipatory from colonialism”.

In the sixth focal session, Dr. Akram Barakat, the Director of the Islamic Knowledge Association in Lebanon chaired the discussions on "

The Role of the University in Culturalization". Dr. Talal Atrissi, from Al Maaref University, discussed the "problematic reality of humanities in Arab universities," where he pointed out that “the written material and the conferences held had a common donominator, the Humanities are in crisis. Such a 'crisis’ goes back to the formation of social sciences in the Arab society out of their historical and social context, their dependency on the Western sociology, and their lack of confidence in the curricula for making sense of their own societies as well as the reduction of the university’s educational returns to its efficiency in the labor market.

For his part, Dr. Mohammed Deifulallah Al-Katabari from Yemen presented the ‘culturalization of the heritage and university’s educational curricula” where he emphasized the necessity of “having the curricula containing the fundamentals of culturalization of their scientific contents in such a way as to ensure that our youth and our Arab and Islamic societies are immunized from the dangers of intellectual deviation and cultural infiltration at a time when the intellectual and cultural reciprocity among different cultures has become so easily realized”.

In his study on "Humanities Servicing Society", Dr. Haggag Abu Jabr, from Egypt, criticized the concept of "the era of nation-building." He cited the Egyptian thinker Ahmed Lotfi El Sayed, the first director of the new Egyptian university in the 1920s, for not having any word referring to 'society' in his biography titled as 'The Story of my Life'. However, for Dr. Abu Jabr, “the word ‘Ummah’ had been repeated for eighty times. Dr. Abu Jabr sought to present the problematic of "the imitating Humanities, their methods and theories with no critique and their role in shaping the Egyptian cultural elite that aspires to build the Ummah.”

The conference sessions witnessed a number of interventions and questions raised by the audiences.

At the end of the sessions, the Conference Coordinator, Dr. Talal Attrissi, greeted and thanked all the attendees, promising that "the work of this conference will be published in a book, hoping that the content will translated into more than on language.” In conclusion, the President of Al Maaref University distributed honorary shields to the keynote researchers and participants in the conference.