Amila Buturović, Ph.D., professor of the history of religion and culture at the Department of Humanities at York University in Toronto, was a guest on the show "Out of the Box." She went to Toronto to study Arabic literature, and by chance she ended up at the Institute of Islamic Studies. "That's when I realized that the presence of religion in cultural trends is extremely important, and all the time I was learning what it means to be a believer and a cultural creator at the same time. I was very interested in that metaphor that we find in mystical language that reflects our humanity and how the presence of divinity in our experience can be interpreted in a very intimate way. Poetry and love are very important there," said Buturović. What I see happening around us is reduction, she believes. "Reductionism of the entire religious experience and putting the primary focus on what we do in some external sense, how we look as believers, instead of what we believe and how we connect with the meaning that is above us, how we understand the environment around us, how we understand the environment, animals, which is that connection that makes us human beings, and that puts us in the universe, and we look for meaning in the universe. And that dogma in a certain way puts shackles on us; it determines how we should behave to be considered good believers," said Buturović. In the show, she stated that Islam emerged at a time when Arab society was completely divided by bridges of flame, and the issue of identity was primary. "Islam appears to deny all that, to say don't be divided on the issue of tribal foundations and identity, but look for something bigger than you," she said. Speaking about tafsir as a discipline, she said that it is one approach to interpreting the Qur'an that is very rich. "To find meaning in the Qur'an is to consider it a living text, a text that is relevant for all periods, for all those who consider it a holy book, but at the same time to recognize that some things found in the Qur'an are part of a historical context that is unrepeatable. Very often there is a penetration of new interpretations within tafsir, which respond to new trends and new issues that society is facing. Tafsir as a discipline should continue, and it continues," she said. Now we have entered a crisis of secularism and a crisis of the secular order, notes Buturović. "Secularism was supposed to reject religion and take over the public space. However, that did not happen. Religion is very resilient," she pointed out.
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