A short film from the gathering. It begins muted, so use the controls to raise the sound.
On 16 August 2026, the Hassan bin Thabit Na’at Research Center opens the fifth edition of its International Adbi Naat Conference, this year convened in the United Kingdom. Held in collaboration with Naat Forum International, the gathering brings poets, researchers, and lovers of the Prophetic praise into one room, and treats Na’at as what it has always been, a living body of literature worthy of serious study.
This year the conference turns to a single question, the role of Na’at in interfaith harmony. Across its sessions, scholars consider Na’at as a language of love that reaches beyond any one community: its place in interfaith dialogue, the voices of non-Muslim poets who have written in praise, the message of peace within women’s Na’at literature, and the deep roots of the form in the regional languages of Pakistan and beyond.
Na’at, an international language of love, heard across every community and every tongue.
A call for papers has gone out to researchers in Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, the Gulf, Europe, and America, inviting original work across more than twenty themes. Together they trace how Na’at speaks to the questions of the present age, from human dignity and universal peace to intellectual resistance against extremism, and how the praise of the Holy Prophet ﷺ carries its meaning into every language it is written in.
For Dr. Sarwar Hussain Naqshbandi, who directs the center at Minhaj University, Lahore, the conference is one more turn of a lifelong devotion. It continues the work he has given himself to, the gathering, the preserving, and the carrying forward of Na’at, so that a tradition centuries old keeps finding new readers, new scholars, and new voices in every age.