VIENNA,
March 8, 2005 (IslamOnline.net) – The Cultural League in Austria (Alte
Schmiede) is organizing a forum on March 10, in a bid to cement
dialogue between Islam and the West, in addition to countering the
‘clash of civilization’ mantra.
The
three-day forum will showcase books of divergent ideologies
reinforcing common grounds between Islam and the West through out the
centuries and how they both helped enrich one another, the forum’s
organizers, Walter Famler and Erich Klein, said in a Web site
statement.
“Had
it not been for the Arab thought, there would have not been a
contemporary European philosophy. The fundamentals of the European
poetry is based on Arabic basics,” they said.
The
missive deplored terminology like the “clash of civilizations,”
“the barbers,” “the crusades,” and the “infidels,’ saying
the usage is worsening the already parlous situation.
“The
West and Islam equation should not be solved by army generals or
strategists, who work tirelessly to extend the domino effect of the
clash of civilizations’ theory from the East to the West; from
Afghanistan to the Mediterranean,” the organizers added.
The
apocalyptic theory was originally formulated in an article by Samuel
P. Huntington entitled “The Clash of Civilizations?” published in
the academic journal Foreign Affairs in 1993.
Huntington
later expanded this thesis in his 1996 book “The Clash of
Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order”.
The
Arab world was the guest of honor at the Frankfurt Book Fair, the
world's largest trade fair for books, in October and the dialogue
between Islam and the West took center stage therein.
Cohort
of Writers
The
Austrian forum will bring together a cohort of Arab writers and
intellectuals, including Egyptian novelist Miral Al-Tahawi, Libyan
poet Ibrahim Al-Qouni and Iraqi writer Naeem Wali.
On
its sidelines, an exhibition for Turkish writer and artist Feridun
Zaimoglu under the title “The Third Turkish Blockade”, went
underway Monday, March 7.
Blanketed
by Turkish flags, the fair has irked the right-wing Liberal Party of
Austria (FBO), whose leader Heinz-Christian Strache pressed for
removing the Turkish flag, according to the Austrian daily Der
Standard.
The
exhibition’s director, Gerald Matt, rejected Strache’s demand,
arguing that the flag was a symbol for Ankara’s incessant bids to
join the expanding European Union.
Muslims
make up some 8 per cent of the country’s eight million population.
Islam,
which was officially acknowledged in Austria in 1908, is considered
the second religion in the country after Catholic Christianity.
