Dr. Munir Fasheh

Munir Fasheh is the Founder of the Tamer Institute for Community Education in Palestine (1989) and the Arab Education Forum at CMES/Harvard University (1997). Since 2018, he has been working with JOHUD across Jordan, guided by a vision that embraces mujaawarah, wisdom, and living soils.

For his contribution to the WISE 12 Summit, Dr. Fasheh has chosen “wisdom” as his central theme. He believes that the situation around the world today compels humanity to reclaim wisdom as one of its most crucial values. It is fitting, he notes, for WISE to remind the world that without integrating wisdom into our lives—especially in education—humanity is at risk. The world today faces profound and serious threats.

According to Dr. Fasheh, a vital aspect of wisdom lies in reclaiming learning as an innate human ability. While institutions are necessary for acquiring technical skills and knowledge, they cannot alone provide a full understanding of life. The mind and language are limited. One of the clearest examples of innate learning, he explains, is that every child learns their family’s language by living within real, interactive soils—natural, social, emotional, cultural, and spiritual.

He recalls that the first university established by Arabs 1,200 years ago was the “House of Wisdom” in Baghdad. Wisdom, he emphasizes, is the essence of Arab-Islamic civilization. Therefore, he believes that the region is uniquely equipped to help restore wisdom as a core human value in a world that is in danger of destroying itself.