Assessing the dialogues of civilizations between the Western and Muslim worlds.

• Author: Selim, Mohammad El-Sayed
• Position: Report

THE CONCEPT OF THE DIALOGUE AMONG civilizations emerged in the post Cold War era in the context of Euro-Arab relations in 1992, not--as widely believed--as a response to Samuel P. Huntington's thesis on the Clash of Civilizations articulated in 1993. The concept first emerged in the literature of the inaugural Inter-Parliamentary Conference on Security and Cooperation in the Mediterranean (ICSCM) held in Malaga, Spain, in June of 1992.

Parliamentarians from various Mediterranean countries, Arabs and Europeans, participated in that conference. Its "Final Document" referred to the concept of the Dialogue among Civilizations and Human Rights. It referred to the common values of civilizations, the norms of mutual understanding and tolerance, and cooperation in the fields of culture and human rights. It also resolved that dialogue was essential to bridge the gap between the Arab and European peoples, and that such should be based on "common values such as respect for human life, the need for spiritual values, and human solidarity."

The emphasis of the ICSCM on the centrality of dialogue among civilizations was a response to the ominous references in some Western literature to the "Green Peril," and in some Islamic literature to the West as being the next adversary after the collapse of the Soviet Union. However, that emphasis was overshadowed by the controversy which Huntington's theory had triggered. The main thrust of Huntington's theory was that the emerging global conflict will be the one between Islamic and Western civilizations. That theory led to global controversies resulting in a number of proposals to engage in dialogues among civilizations in which the Muslim world was the common denominator.

The most important of these proposals was the one submitted by former Iranian President Khatami in 1997, which was reflected in the Tehran Declaration issued by the Organization of the Islamic Conference in 1999, and was formally presented in his UN General Assembly speech in 1999; which resulted in the United Nations General Assembly Declaration on the year 2001 as the year of the Dialogue among Civilizations.

These proposals multiplied and gained momentum after the 11 September 2001 events as these deepened the global divide between the Western and Muslim worlds. For example, in November 2001, the League of Arab States held a conference entitled "The Dialogue among Civilizations: Cooperation, not Conflict," while UN Secretary General Kofi Anan announced his "Alliance among Civilizations" in 2005, and the "Coalition for the Global Commons" initiative put forward by the Centre for Global Negotiations in 2008.

Emphasis on the need for a dialogue among civilizations led to the initiation of various dialogue models between the Muslim and the non-Muslim worlds, such as the Japan-Muslim Dialogue among Civilizations, the Sino-Arab dialogue within the Sino-Arab Forum, the European Union-OIC Dialogue, and the Euro-Mediterranean Dialogue. The final outcome of these models has been dismal. They have not resulted in meaningful improvement in mutual perceptions or a reduction of the Islamophobia that has been sweeping the West, or the mistrust in the Western world which has been gaining roots in the Muslim world since the end of the Cold War.

This paper will outline some of the major dialogue models between Western and Muslim actors, with a view of assessing the extent to which they have been able to achieve their objectives, and the correlates which account for their limited achievements. The main objective is to assess the premises and promises of these dialogues and to infer possible scenarios concerning the most viable structures and processes which could lead to their vitalization.

MODELS OF DIALOGUE BETWEEN WESTERN AND MUSLIM CIVILIZATIONS

The choice of dialogue models was based on three main criteria. These are: actuality, patterns of participation, and relevance to the theme of dialogue among civilizations. A brief review of these criteria may be in order: (i) The models chosen are "actual" cases of dialogues, not mere proposals, as has been the case with "The Amman Declaration on Civilizational Dialogue" issued in 2008 by "the Forum of the Middle Approach for Thought and Culture" based in Jordan. The proposal was just an appeal to launch a dialogue among civilizations; (ii) Only cases of dialogue between Muslim and Western actors were selected, which meant that that cases in which one side was mostly involved, such as the model of "dialogue of civilizations" initiated by the League of Arab States and held in November 2001, were not included. The parties of the dialogue must also be Muslim and Western actors, which meant those dialogues such as the Japan-Muslim world and the Sino-Arab dialogues, were excluded. These last cases did not involve dialogues between Western and Muslim worlds. The World Public Forum of Dialogue of Civilizations was also excluded because it did not necessarily address the question of Western-Muslim world relations; and (iii) Out of the various dialogue models, only ones which were related to the notion of dialogue of civilizations, were selected. This meant that the models of inter-faith dialogues, such as the "Catholic-Muslim Forum" established in March 2008, were not included. This is because inter-faith models deal with issues not directly related to the theme of the dialogues of civilizations.

On the basis of these criteria, five models were singled out, the Dialogue of Old Civilizations, the Euro-Mediterranean Dialogue, the European Union and the Organization of the Islamic Conference Dialogue, the US-Islamic World Forum, and the Alliance of Civilizations Dialogue. A brief review of these models may be in order.

The Dialogue of Old Civilizations

The model of the Dialogue of Old Civilizations grew out of the Khatami proposal of 1997 to engage into a dialogue among world civilizations. Khatami thought that the point of beginning was to initiate a dialogue among old civilizations to be expanded later on to a global dialogue. Iran invited Egypt, Greece, and Italy to engage into a dialogue at their capacity as representatives of "Old Civilizations," a term which became the official title of the dialogue, with four countries representing the Persian, Pharonic, Greek, and Roman civilizations respectively. The first meeting was held in Athens in 1998. During that meeting the participants agreed on the basic principles of the dialogue and the action plan and agreed to call for a plenary meeting in which other actors will also participate. The quadruple meeting issued the "Athens Declaration" which outlined main guidelines of future action. For example, it resolved o focus on the legacies of the four civilizations which the participating countries represent and their contributions to contemporary civilizations, in addition to the questions of globalization, and informatics. It also reiterated a number of principles which will serve as guidelines for admitting other countries in the dialogue. A number of meetings were later held in Delphi and Tehran in 1999, in which it was agreed to hold a plenary conference in Cairo under the theme of "Dialogue between Civilizations: Implications for the Modern World" (Badr 2003). That conference was never held, no new members were admitted to the dialogue process and the dialogue was quietly discontinued. It seems that the Egyptian-Iranian tension played a role in the collapse of the dialogue, and the countries involved seemed to have decided to replace it with the UN activities within the General Assembly resolution on considering the year 2001 as the year of the dialogue among civilizations.

The Dialogue of Old Civilizations was a pre-dominantly governmental activity. Each one of them spoke on behalf of his government, rather than his civilization. Governments also decided the agenda and the rules of the dialogue and never invited non-governmental organizations to take part with the exception of the parliamentary meeting held in Tehran in 2000, in which semi-official representation was also dominant. Further, the dialogue was mostly past-oriented. It focused mainly of historical legacies rather than contemporary themes. The main emphasis was on the past achievements and common grounds among the four civilizations. As the Dialogue of Old Civilizations lacked a broad social and civil society representation, and focused mainly on historical legacies, it was doomed from the beginning to failure.

The Euro-Mediterranean Dialogue

In October 1994, the EU presented a proposal to establish a Euro-Mediterranean Partnership (EMP), which led to holding a ministerial conference on 27-28 November 1995 in Barcelona. The conference issued the Barcelona Declaration, which referred, among other things, to "cultural cooperation and dialogue among civilizations." Parallel with the ministerial meeting, the Euro-med Civil Forum was established as an ad hoc meeting comprising civil society groups in the EMP. The Forum held its first meeting in conjunction with the ministerial meeting. The objective of the Forum was to highlight the role of the civil society in cultural cooperation. It issued the Civil Declaration of Barcelona, which referred to projects of "cultural dialogue." The Forum held its second meeting on the theme of Euro-Mediterranean cultural dialogue in Malta in April 1997. It issued a Final Declaration which emphasized the need for a Euro-Med cultural dialogue if the economic and political aspects of the EMP are to achieve significant results. It also referred to the role of the Western media in demonizing the Muslims, and the Western-Muslim negative historical legacies, and the southern immigration to Europe as an outcome of the failure of development projects in the South, as the main impediments of a meaningful cultural dialogue. The Forum held nine subsequent meetings most of which were in conjunction with the EMP ministerial conferences, and the last...