Comments on and off topic

Since this is a moderated blog, comments come to me for review before they are published. Over the last few days, two people have attempted to leave comments on the "Traditionalism in Norway" posting which I have not published, because the comments had nothing to do with Traditionalism in Norway.

"Sedgwick seems a devoted follower of the Western academic model of reductive empiricism," according to one of these two comments. Well, I suppose I could post something on "The Western academic model" and let people make comments there... but I don't really want to start a public discussion about myself on this blog. However, as always, anyone with anything interesting to say is welcome to email me directly: sedgwick@aucegypt.edu. Please note that I need to get an email directly in able to reply to it; the blog doesn't record the email of a person leaving a comment.

Traditionalism in Norway

Norway has never really featured much in the history of Traditionalism (though at least one political organization, Nation & Kultur, is somewhat Traditionalist), but even so there is a definite interest there. I have been invited to Norway next month to speak on Traditionalism as follows:

• Wednesday Oct 4: The Center for Studies of Holocaust and Religious Minorities in Oslo (13:00) & Kjettersk Kjeller (19:00)
• Thursday Oct 5: University of Bergen
• Friday Oct 6: University of Trondheim

The emphasis of most of my lectures will be on political Traditionalism, but in Bergen I will talk about Traditionalist Sufism.

Forthcoming Traditionalist Fest in Canada

Sacred Web is organizing a major conference at the University of Alberta on September 23rd and 24th, 2006.

Many leading Traditionalists will be there. The speakers include:

• The Prince of Wales
• Seyyed Hossein Nasr
• William Chittick
• James Cutsinger
• Jean-Loius Michon
• Harry Oldmeadow
• Reza Shah-Kazemi
• Huston Smith
• Two officials from the Jordanian court: Waleed el-Ansary and Joseph Lumbard

The Prince of Wales will not be there in person, but will be spending a taped address.

This promises to be a fascinating and important conference. I wish I could go myself... Others might like to check out the conference announcement, and if anyone feels like writing a short report (either for this blog or just for me) I would be most grateful.

Nasr in Iran

The Sixth Biennial Conference on Iranian Studies in London went well--dominated, as one might expect, by scholars from Iran or the Iranian diaspora. The interest there in my paper on "The International Ramifications of the Thought of Seyyed Hossein Nasr" showed to what extent interest him (and so in traditionalism) in Iran is still continuing to grow.

(I'm now back in Cairo and will try to attend to this blog more often).

Book announcement: For Prophet and Tsar

Robert D. Crews has just published For Prophet and Tsar: Islam and Empire in Russia and Central Asia (Harvard, 480 pp, ISBN 0-674-02164-9, $29.95/£19.95).

As the Economist review of the book (illustrated with this photo of Alexander Dugin’s fellow Eurasian, Mufti Talgat Tajuddin, and another famous Russian) notes:

Mr Crews's research . . . is of huge relevance to the present day. . . From the state's point of view, there is a dilemma: how far can the compact with Orthodoxy go without precluding a similar one with the Russian Federation's 15m or so Muslim subjects?

The idea of some entente between modern Russian nationalism and Russian Muslims is not as absurd as it seems. Among the ideologues of neo-nationalism in Russia, there have been several figures of Muslim-Tatar background who subscribe to the ideal of a Eurasian or "Slavic-Turkic" union—roughly coinciding with the Soviet Union—whose common enemy is global, or Anglo-Saxon, capitalism.

I’m delighted that the Economist has noticed the importance of Eurasianism. But, to judge from the index at least, none of these important developments feature Dr Crews’s book.