Manifestations of minority religions in the public space – such as religious structures, attire, and insignia – are amongst the most contentious issues in the current immigration debate. Despite the vast political importance of this issue, and the empirical evidence that exposure to religious cues influences attitudes, research on the impact of manifestations of religion in the public space is scarce and focused on host society members. Furthermore, theories propose conflicting predictions about the potential effects of exposure to religion in the public space.

Based on a synthesis of decades of scholarship in numerous languages, The Caliph and the Imam: The Making of Sunnism and Shiism, is the first truly global and longue durée history of Sunni-Shii relations. The dispute over who should guide Muslims, the Caliph or the Imam, marks the origin of the Sunni-Shii split in Islam. Toby Matthiesen explores this hugely significant division from its origins to the present day.

Dr Haytham Alhamwi is the Chairman of the Syrian British Consortium, a London-based advocacy body for British Syrians. He is also a co-founder and the manager of Rethink Rebuild Society, a charity established in Manchester in 2013 to support Syrian refugees and asylum seekers in the UK.

Dr Husam Haj Omar, Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, Oxford will chair the event (introducing Dr Haytham Alhamwi and and moderating the audience Q&A.)

The origins of modern US-UK-led coalition warfare trace back to the Mediterranean theater of World War II. It was there on the treacherous battlefields of North Africa, Sicily, and Italy where Anglo-American forces learned to harmonize their fighting efforts under a modular and largely experimental integrated headquarters for the first time.

“[T]o all intents and purposes US security is being run for them at the President’s request by the British. A British officer sits in Washington with Mr Edgar Hoover [Director FBI] and [Colonel] Bill Donovan [Coordinator of Information] for this purpose and reports regularly to the President. It is of course essential that this fact should not become known in view of the furious uproar it would cause if known to the Isolationists.”
- Major Desmond Morton [PM Churchill’s personal secretary for intelligence liaison]

A wine reception will follow the lecture, all welcome.

Joint Strike Fighter is the sole example of full-spectrum defence procurement collaboration on a weapons platform between the United States and the United Kingdom. What does the unique nature of the JSF programme tell us about the transatlantic defence-industrial relationship? What other models of cooperation are preferred, and why? How do defence procurement and broader geopolitical factors shape each other within the transatlantic context?