الإسلام والغرب: نحو عالم أفضل

Islam and the West… for a better world @

million Muslims, living and interacting with society. Dialogue with the Muslim communities has become more important and is being discussed everywhere. Germany will institutionalise the dialogue with its Muslim communities starting in September 2006. Serious events like those associated with the cartoons controversy must be a reason to question our concept of a dialogue, and I believe that not only in Germany people would like to know whether all efforts invested into dialogue so far have been in vain or ill-conceived when at the height of the controversy none of the agreements and declarations reached during many high-level conferences on Dialogue and Interfaith Harmony could be mobilized to contain the crisis. This crisis once again has shown us very clearly the immense difficulty of comprehensive understanding and the lack of knowledge on both sides about the societal system and the role of religion in the Muslim world as well as about the values of secular systems in Europe. In my many visits to the Arab world and the Muslim world at large from Nigeria to Indonesia I witnessed, however, a desire for real dialogue and cooperation and the willingness to find durable solutions to improve knowledge about the other culture as well as improving trust and acceptance that we differ on many points. We should, however, also recognize that we have many value concepts in common. The approach must be undertaken in a spirit of establishing this common ground without becoming apologetic or over-harmonious. What we need is a culture of tolerance defined by a pluralistic view of the world. Fear must be replaced by trust and hope. We must stop accusing each other and start to listen to the other's viewpoint. We in the West must realise that our partners in the Arab World feel victimised by perceived double standards in our policies.

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