Contents

Address by

Ms Khalida Toumi

Algerian Minister of Culture, Representative

of His Excellency Mr Abdulaziz Bouteflika, President

of the People’s Democratic Republic of Algeria

In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, Most Merciful

Excellency Dr Mahatir Mohammad, former Prime Minister of Malaysia,

Excellency Dr Abdulaziz Othman Altwaijri, Director General of ISESCO,

Excellencies,

Honourable scholars, researchers and academics,

Ladies and gentlemen,

Assalamu alaikum warahmatu Allah wabarakatuh,

I should like to express my thanks and gratitude to you for the kind invitation you have extended to us to take part in this highly important meeting on dialogue among civilizations, which is organized under the high patronage of His Excellency President Zine El-Abidine bin Ali, in the capital of the Tunisian Republic, the land of dialogue and civilizations and the symbol of tolerance and alliance between religions and cultures.

I would like also to extend my special thanks to His Excellency the President of the Tunisian Republic for undertaking this precious initiative and for offering us such a lavish hospitality. I likewise seize this occasion to congratulate His Excellency for the honorific decoration awarded to him by the Director General of the Islamic Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization -ISESCO-. Congratulations then to His Excellency and to the Tunisian people and Government for this rightly deserved award.

Similarly, I would like to express my deepest gratitude and sincerest thanks to His Excellency Dr Abdulaziz Othman Altwaijri, The Director General of the Islamic Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, for his judicious leadership of ISESCO towards the highest levels of success and brilliancy.

I am delighted to express to you my great appreciation of the sound choice of the subject currently debated in this honourable gathering; namely the subject of dialogue and alliance of civilizations. For it is a subject that bodes well for humanity at large, as it constitutes a catalyst for reaching consensus among different peoples. It is well known that dialogue is an exemplary pattern of behaviour that allows all human beings to interact and to communicate so as they can go hand in hand towards horizons of harmony and mutual love. Civilization is, indeed, a suitable groundwork for the exchange of ideas and creative works, and for invoking the spirit of multiplicity within the unity of the human gender. Diversity is an ethical or anthropological dimension that views all men as equal, wherever they happen to be found and however they may be different.

Our tolerant religion, Islam, preordains the law of multiplicity and urges us to act according to it, true to Allah’s divine word “O mankind! We have created you from a male and a female, and made you into nations and tribes, that you may know one another”. Allah is the Self-Sufficient Master, and His creatures are diverse and different by their nature.

More than that, has not our tolerant religion prescribed to us belief in all Prophets and respect for all religions and revealed Books as a basic behaviour of faith? Does not this confirm the clarity and commitment of Islam message and Prophet with regard to the humanity of human beings?

The human interpretation of this message shows that the multiplicity in doctrines, schools of thought, and creeds in our tolerant religion is attributable to the fact that our religion is completely immune to dangers of unilateral, individualistic reading and deadly narrow-mindedness. In no time has our Islamic civilization appeared as a conformist bloc with narrow horizons. Rather, it remained throughout history as a universal school preaching the respect for non-Muslims, and as a vivid exemplary model receptive to the contributions of different peoples and cultures living under its protection. Our civilization thus succeeded in presenting to mankind noble perceptions and practical proposals for the human project we have inherited from our ancestors who lived under the banner of Islam and for the cause of Islam since 14 centuries. In our turn, we, grandsons of Avicenna, Averroës, Ibn Khaldoun, Al-Ghazali, Abû Madian Al-Ghawth- the spiritual leader of Sufism and the source of pride to Algeria and the Arab Maghreb- do embrace the divine message and the Mohammedian word with angelic serenity and reassurance, an open mind and an enlightened science.

Ladies and gentlemen,

It is sad to see this self-evident truth suppressed and over-shadowed by the ignorance of some extremist groups who are keen to use religion for political, strategic-and even commercial- purposes. The lessons that can be drawn from the terrorist campaign which hit some Islamic countries, including Algeria, are:

1- Islam and Muslims were the mostly-hit victims of terrorism. They suffered heavy losses in lives, in properties, in the economy, in their faith and in their civilization. This refutes the thesis of “clash of civilizations”.

2- Worse still, terrorists used to find in some Western capitals a safe haven to launch their deadly projects, when terrorism was once viewed as “an armed resistance” acting like a ruthless machine killing and chasing away Muslim children and women whose cry and moaning was treated with scant regard by those who turned out today to be in the lead of the theorizers of the “clash of civilizations”.

3- The events of the 9/11 in New York and 16/3 in Madrid are a grim reminder of the sufferings we have endured. We did- and still do- console the victims of these appalling tragedies; for we ourselves suffered similar tragedies. “Only the one who is burned with a live coal can feel its heat”, as the Algerian saying goes. Terrorism, being a phenomenon that does not recognize any boundaries, religions and civilizations, shall be fought through the contribution, mobilization and solidarity of all countries provided that such a solidarity be based on multiple levels transcending mere security cooperation. Only then can the concept of dialogue among civilizations have its noble humane dimension. And only then can the international community manage to fight terrorism as a real threat and not a subject open to speculation. We cannot do that without giving an accurate and unanimously agreed-on definition of terrorism. Algeria, which was among the first countries to fight terrorism and to call to its combating and eradication, refuses any confusion between terrorism and the legitimate right of peoples to get rid of occupation and colonialism. Otherwise, we, Algerians, would- God forbids- call our glorious revolution a mere terrorist movement, or even qualify the Moujahid Abdulaziz Bouteflika when he joined the ranks of the Liberation Army a mere terrorist. Of course we won’t do that for Mr Bouteflika says a famous saying which is still a source of pride to our generations and humanity: “I have never thought that I was fighting the western civilization. My struggle was, rather, against the colonialist French hegemony which deprived my people from the possibility to engage in dialogue with the Western civilization, in full respect for our civilizational and cultural values.”

Ladies and gentlemen,

It is certain that Islam is innocent of terrorism as Christianity is innocent of Nazis’ enormities. Unfortunately, the West is still desperate to find a fictional enemy to hang all problems and misfortunes over it. After the red enemy, some ill-intentioned theorizers are pleased to propound a gloomy analysis of the destiny of humanity on the basis of the so-called “ clash of civilizations”, igniting thus a sort of unknown “ green” danger that will plunge a wide area that goes beyond the distance between the Atlantic Ocean to the Indian Ocean.

From today onwards, the cultural challenge Muslims should face is primarily that of demonstrating the innocence of Islam as a faith, cultures and civilization. I have put the word “cultures” in plural, and the word “civilization” in singular, not for the sake of a stylistic pattern, but because we believe that there are many cultures but one civilization, which is a universal civilization. Islam has contributed- and still contributes- to the shaping of that universal civilization.

It is our duty, we Muslims, more than ever, to recognize that we have rich history, language and cultures. Therefore, we have to redress our image through rejecting any suspicion attached to us and to our truth without the least restraint or scientific critic, and to break silence in that regard. Our future challenges find their expression in the urgent need to highlight the underlying humane nature of our contribution: the essence of the Islamic civilization lies with its production and interaction with culture and cultural multiplicity. And this is the message we are required to convey to all nations and peoples.

Ladies and gentlemen,

The shape of the world to come can be determined in our absence or even behind our back. Cultures, like humans, are not eternal. Globalization which turned out to be inevitable, or even a synonym of one emerging pattern, may produce disastrous result, or at least come up with a unilateral culture. If mankind is to preserve its multiple, creative aspect, it has to follow a steady common action against the likely deviations of the “commercial culture” in a global market where all properties are viewed as commercial commodities.

Now as we are obliged to adapt to the new shape of the world, we still have to become fully integrated into a vigilant group bent on the preservation of our cultural identity. To be vigilant implies by no means narrow-mindedness, which is similar to death. Rather, it implies a willingness to highlight our cultural innovations and heritage treasures as distinctive features of our identity within a global human framework.

Therefore, dialogue of cultures is not just meant to be a subject for a symposium. Rather, it is a real challenge with complicated ramifications. The challenge faced by the Islamic countries is one that involves giving a new human dimension to globalization, on the basis of new relations of cooperation and exchange that are conducive to a high level of dialogue among cultures that are likely to make us contribute actively to ongoing action.

A constructive dialogue is one that involves two parties; otherwise, it is nothing but a “monologue”. When westerns talk about the world, they tend to give us the impression that we are something like apprentices of their school and civilization. This western narcissist view is recurrent in the prevailing discourse, through concepts in the like of “ aids”, “assistance”,…We expect them to talk with us using such new and more realistic concepts as “partnership”, “alliance” and “dialogue…This implies that we should spare no effort in convincing the “other” of accepting a new conception of globalization, and giving up the time-honoured haughty vision inherited from the times where colonialism was viewed as the preacher of a civilizational message to peoples and nations often treated as inferior creatures, quasi-humans, if not barbarians. History records that Louis Philippe who led the French campaign against Algeria in 1830 was illiterate, and that his opponent, the Emir Abdulkader, founder of the Algerian State, had an intimate knowledge of the works of Aristotle, Plato and other Greek philosophers, in addition to the works of Arabs and Muslims. This Sufi poet witnessed the tragedy of the destruction by the French of the Algerian manuscripts. We cannot afford to forget easily that two thirds of the city of Algiers were destroyed by the French army to turn it into a western, strange without the least respect for sensitivities and culture of the population. Thus tens of Mosques, Zawiyas, Quranic Schools and graveyards were systematically ravaged by the colonialist war machine and the infamous enormities committed by France against us and against humanity. Contrary to the noblest gesture once displayed by the last Emir of Granada Abu Abdullah when he ordained not to destroy his library, the gangs of the French colonialism did not refrain from setting fire, in 1962, to the National Library on the eve of Algeria’s Independence. By the time the French arrived to Algeria, there was 90 % of literate population. By their departure, they left 90 % illiterate people. Unfortunately, these are the instances of what some voices, even in the third Millennium, tend to describe as the “merits” of colonialism.

Time is ripe for changing this erroneous perception of history. We have to make others accept us and be aware of our existence as an entity, a history and a culture. This implies that we should be modest and pay heed to others, so as not to fall prey to arrogance and narcissism. This leads us to ask whether the West is seeking earnestly to know us and to respect our difference as we pay respect to its difference. Of course it does not. Witness the daily plight, disasters and carnages against the Palestinian and Iraqi peoples.

Excellencies,

Ladies and gentlemen,

The cultural and intellectual evolution of mankind has made it difficult for social sciences and anthropological theories to figure out even the possibility to draw a rising ladder of cultural practices, in the like of that once drawn between civilized cultures and barbarous ones. Out of my country’s awareness of the importance of this issue for the benefit of mankind, it was among the first countries to adopt UNESCO’s International Convention for the Protection of Intangible Cultural Heritage.

Let me put it blatantly: we are not ready to see the distinctive features of our personality effaced and outcast by alien patterns of behaviour. Therefore, we are required to join efforts and see globalization as a positive opportunity for cultural multiplicity, the enriching of mankind and harmony.

Let us then bypass the misnomer of “clash of civilizations” and move ahead towards the supreme goal of alliance and mutual understanding, true to Allah’s word “Thus We have made you a just nation, that you be witnesses over mankind” : a moderate nation that does not pretend neither better nor worse than other nations. Moderation means, among other things, to strike balance within the framework of a dialogue among the different cultures and civilizations. Yet we still have a long, difficult way to go, I am rather sure that we are already on the right path and that we will jointly contribute to bring our human family out of the darkness and isolation into large avenues of light and happiness. We will change the sounding alarms that bode ill for our globe into a song of hope and a hymn of happiness.

Publications of the Islamic Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization

-ISESCO- 1428H/2007 A.D