Seyran Aryfov: “The Congress of Orientalists is an opportunity to get rid of prejudices about Islam and Muslims, relying on scientific researches”

On November 27 the scientific part of the II International Congress of Orientalists (excursion for participants and the closing ceremony -  on November 28. - Ed.) was held at V.I. Vernadsky Taurida National University. The event was jointly organized by above mentioned University, the A. Krymsky Institute of Oriental Studies under National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, Center for Islamic Studies at NU "Ostrog Academy" and the Ukrainian Center for Islamic Studies.

Orientalists from Ukraine, Poland, Turkey, Lithuania, Romania took part in the Congress. The program included both plenary presentations and work in several sections: "Oriental source studies and historiography", "Formation of regional and ethnocultural identities of the population and the Azov region", "Islam and sociocultural processes in the Black and Caspian Seas basins".

At the opening ceremony, the head of Association "Alraid" Seyran Aryfov thanked the organisers and scholars, noting that Oriental Studies, of course, were a broader discipline than Islamic Studies, but this event included a lot of works on Islamic Studies too. He also stressed out the need to get rid of various distortions, stereotypes and prejudices concerning Islam and Muslims - absolutely, based on objective evidences and scientific research:

“As we know, history is often being written for a specific political order, used for a specific ideological purpose — this also applied to the Muslims of Ukraine, in particular the Crimean Tatars: for decades their history has been distorted and falsified, as well as the history of Muslims in general - not only in Ukraine, but around the world.”