The Islamic World Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (ICESCO) has released the fifth issue of its quarterly cultural magazine, published under the supervision of the Organization’s Center for Poetry and Literature. The issue includes a collection of articles, interviews, and studies addressing contemporary intellectual, literary, and cultural issues in the Arab and Islamic worlds.

The issue features a main dossier entitled “Women’s Literature: The Crisis of Terminology and the Horizons of Imagination,” comprising a set of articles by a number of critics and specialists. Among them are an article by critic and writer Dr. Abdullah Ibrahim entitled “Feminist Narrative: The Boundaries of the Concept and Its Conditions,” and an article by Saudi writer Dr. Mona Al-Maliki entitled “From the Question of Existence to the Stakes of Writing: On the Problematics of Terminology and the Necessity of the Feminist Question.”

The issue also includes a special interview with Dr. Hussein Abdel-Razzak Al-Jazairy, former Saudi Minister of Health and founder of the first Faculty of Medicine in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in 1969, who also served as Director of the World Health Organization’s Regional Office for the Eastern Mediterranean for thirty years. In addition, Dr. Salim Al Habsi, Director of the General Secretariat of National Commissions and Conferences at ICESCO, offers a reading of the roles of the ICESCO Regional Center in Sharjah in an article entitled “The Sharjah Center: ICESCO’s Radiance on the Shores of the Arabian Gulf.”

The content of the issue extends to topics in language, literature, and cultural history. Among them is an article by researcher Uday Sattam from Syria on the influence of the Arabic language on the poetry of Hafez Shirazi; a study by Dr. Turba bent Ammar from Mauritania entitled “Sufi Literature in the Western Islamic World during the Medieval and Modern Periods: A Reading in Methodology and Style”; and a study by Dr. Adel Aref from Jordan entitled “Artificial Intelligence as an Authoritarian Discourse,” which traces transformations in technological discourse and its intersections with power and meaning, reflecting the diversity of approaches and multiplicity of perspectives within the issue.