Sami Shakir presents a talk on Islam and the Middle East and the history that shaped current events on Wednesday, Oct. 14 at noon in Communication & Journalism room 256.
Two historic facts about the Middle East involve science, arts and other creative human activities that flourished during the classical period of Islam (the Umayyad and Abassid periods), and that at some point in history a gradual decay in the Muslim Worlds started culminating in today’s failed states in the Middle East.
While many specialists have vigorously explored these causes, Shakir will introduce a simple but useful mathematical model to frame the causes of failure.
Shakir was born in Iraq and moved to the US in 1976 where he earned M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Physics in 1978 and 1980, respectively. He is currently with Tau Technologies, an Albuquerque-company dedicated to government engineering and scientific research and development. Shakir has a keen interest in history in general, and Islamic history in particular.
