Towards enlightenment
I’ve been reading about the 18th symposium of the Democratic Constitutional Rally which was held in Tunis this November. There’s a great article about it in this month’s issue of the Middle East. You’ll be happy to know that many delegations from Africa, Asia, and the Middle East were present in this symposium in order to make this essential point:
World stability and security depends on the mutual understanding and rapprochement among all civilisations, cultures, and religions.
It is with great pride that I state that this symposium took place in the Arab world and amongst many Muslims who are in dire need of constructive dialogue and understanding:
To over come the pervading ignorance, confusion, and misconceptions, an appeal was issued by the symposium for fruitful and constructive dialogue among thinkers, writers, politicians, and representatives of civil society to promote increased solidarity among different world civilisations.
Such a wonderful idea, and yet not many in the West know that these sorts of get-togethers actually exist and are taking place in the Arab world. According to the article, very few delegations from Europe and the U.S were present, and thus I highly doubt this is something they’ll know about through their mainstream media, even though it’s something that gives all of us hope, knowing that peaceful and intellectual thought is not dead in the region.
The fundamental aim must be to find ways of increasing dialogue between nations with the aim of reducing tensions and instability in the world. The present conflict which attempts to set Christians against Muslims must not be tolerated, but all pressure brought to bear to oppose and quash all forms of extremism wherever and whenever they are found.
This makes me very happy, because it’s exactly what we’re trying to do here at Mideast Youth. I congratulate everyone who played a role in this symposium, and everyone who made it possible, and I think more people should know that this is taking place in a region they wouldn’t expect it to. Dialogue and uniting against all forms of extremist ideologies and behaviors is what we should be striving towards for the sake of a stable and secure future.
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Are you all familiar with the Daniel Pearl Foundation? Another thing to pay attention to. You should visit the website.
Come on Esra’a, what do you expect. Islam is not compatible with democracy, even though the head of the largest democracy is a Muslim. Even though these groups exist, Muslims don’t won’t democracy.
How come I didn’t hear about this on CNN? Or do the West don’t want to show the peopel living there that home grown democratic movements exist within Muslim countries? Hmm… ohh well.
Jina-
I don’t think it is a conspiracy…
In the West, as you probably know…are biggest source of information about Islam tends to come from Muslim resources. Most Muslims live in situations that have state-controlled information and little freedom of speech.
I would say the biggest culprit of distoring the imagine of Muslims is, by far, the Muslims themselves.
Personally, I was never exposed to much liberal or democratic ideas from the Muslim world until I starting looking into these blogs, which are a very new phenomena, as is the Internet itself.
Can anybody out there name me three, mainstream liberal Muslim newspapers, especially ones that are readily accessible?
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