Papers of Dialogue - 1 - 2012 - English

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January - March 2012

“Diversity: the Mediterranean’s major wealth” Giulio Terzi di Sant'Agata, Italian Foreign Minister Geopolitics

Interreligious and intercultural dialogue

Insights

01

January - March 2012

“Diversity: the Mediterranean’s major wealth” Giulio Terzi di Sant'Agata, Italian Foreign Minister Geopolitics

www.agi.it, www.agiarab.com Papers of Dialogue: no 1 | January-March 2012

Editor in chief: Roberto Iadicicco

Editorial team coordinator: Daniel Atzori

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Photography: www.123rf.com (pages 10, 14, 18) www.shutterstock.com (pages 22, 36, 39) Global Services Incorporation archives (pages 16, 40)

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Publisher AGI SPA: Chairman and CEO: Daniela Viglione General Director: Alessandro Pica AGI, Via Ostiense, 72 – 00154 Rome – Italy

Interreligious and intercultural dialogue

Insights

On the front page: Palermo, Ponte dell’Ammiraglio, twelfth century.

The work showcases the mastery of Arab and Norman engineers.

TABLE OF CONTENTS Editorial 04 The value of diversity, the challenge of cooperation Paolo Scaroni

Geopolitics 06 The new Mediterranean at the heart of Italian foreign policy Interview with Giulio Terzi di Sant’Agata, Italian Foreign Minister

Davide Sarsini Novak 10 The post-global scenario Gianluca Sadun Bordoni

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13 The gilded world shines no longer Christopher M. Davidson 16 The possible integration between desert and city Giulio Sapelli 20 New Italians with international roots Rassmea Salah

Interreligious and intercultural dialogue

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22 Jesus in the light of Islam Angelo Iacovella 25 The material and spiritual challenges of European Islam Imam Yahya Pallavicini 27 The essence of interreligious dialogue Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran 30 Building a culture of peace Daniele Nahum

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32 Aristotle, a common philosophical heritage for the Mediterranean Francesca Forte

Insights 36 Changing places, changing hearts Wafa’ Majaés Abdel Nour 40 Tunisian corners in Catania Lilia Zaouali

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Biographies

E ditorial ‘‘Editorial’’

The value of diversity, the challenge of cooperation

C

omplexity has always been a distinctive feature of the social, political, economic and environmental contexts in which major corporations operate. The last ten years have seen such radical change that the world’s economies – and the companies that operate within them – have been encouraged to tackle new opportunities and thereby rethink their business models. This constantly evolving scenario is bound to influence the role and strategies of any corporation, especially those of an international energy company.

Paolo Scaroni eni CEO

Recently, an even greater awareness of their country’s potential and the search for new forms of freedom has inspired people from several countries bordering the Mediterranean Sea to set off the phenomenon which has become known as the “Arab Spring”. This has prompted the rediscovery of the value of local identities while forcing Western countries to rethink the concept of their cooperation with these countries.

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I am convinced that there can be no innovation without an understanding of the value of diversity.

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As CEO of eni, I am proud of the cooperation strategy that we have always promoted, based on dialogue and a commitment to integration with the local populations. This vision has been part of eni’s DNA since it was founded by Enrico Mattei. This model has allowed us to forge longterm relationships with the communities in which we operate around the world. The model has seen eni support these communities in their long term development by bringing energy and new development opportunities, as well as other tangible contributions, to the region. This also provides stability to our investments, because it allows us to establish solid long-term relationships.

I believe that focusing on the development of all countries – industrialized and developing, energy producers and consumers – is vitally

important in order to achieve price stability that is beneficial to producers, and even more so to consumers – who need steady supply just as much as producers need steady demand. As the world experiences extremely difficult times, we cannot ignore the needs of all regions and the importance of investing in their growth potential. Providing energy and improving sustainability is a virtuous cycle that is beneficial to everyone in an industry characterized by a growing need for security.

Valuing diversity and cooperation is key for eni in promoting cultural innovation within the organization. I am convinced that there can be no innovation without an understanding of the value of diversity. I like to quote Lorenz and Lorsch, who back in the seventies argued that the secret of a company’s success is to promote close interaction between widely diverse people.

Valuing diversity means having the cultural tools to do so. In order to work with eni, each of our people must be thoroughly familiar with the history and culture of the areas where we operate. When we travel to a country to sign a deal, we consider the knowledge of that country’s history and culture as prerequisite for negotiation.

This is why culture, in the widest meaning of the word, is an essential aspect of our work, and perhaps the most important true source of models of cooperation. In conclusion, for a market pursuing the common good to function effectively, it is essential that all company stakeholders involved are informed, aware and act with moral integrity. It is these stakeholders, with their investments, business decisions and yet again cooperation, who can foster the creation of truly sustainable enterprise models.

Sustainability that does not preclude earnings and share price growth, but acts as a lever for value creation.

Geopolitics

The new Mediterranean at the heart of Italian foreign policy Interview with Giulio Terzi di Sant’Agata, Italian Foreign Minister

by Davide Sarsini Novak

“I

taly looks at the countries and societies of the Arab world with very great interest, attention and a wish for partnerships”: these are the words expressed by Italian Foreign Minister Giulio Terzi in an interview to Papers of Dialogue while outlining Italy’s renewed commitment towards the countries of North Africa and the Middle East, after over a year since the beginning of the Arab Spring that is reshaping the region.

Terzi is a 65-year old career diplomat and former Ambassador at the UN and in Washington who was appointed Foreign Minister in Mario Monti’s Italian cabinet last November.

The first emergency that his executive had to face was obviously the Eurozone’s debt crisis, in which Italy was fully involved but also in which it is going from being “part of the problem to part of the solution”, as the Minister underscored. The crisis however has not hindered Italy from focusing great attention on the countries bordering on the Southern shores of the Mediterranean and in the Middle East, which remain the main focus of Italy’s international actions.

“Right now, Italy is called on to make a positive contribution towards the stabilization and the institutional, democratic and social development

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of many countries that are close to us”, Terzi observed. “If it is true that there are fundamental European and Atlantic points of reference in Italy’s foreign policy, today another equally fundamental point of reference is its Mediterranean policy and the policy aimed at establishing contacts with the countries at the centre of the Arab Spring. A broad transformation process is pervading these societies to which we would like to participate while remaining aware that these processes pertain entirely to the countries that are putting them in place. We are also aware that the perception we have in Europe, in the North of the Mediterranean, can have a positive influence at political level and in the development of the cultural and political denotation of Islam, also in terms of the economic and commercial relations that need to be growingly enhanced so that they might turn into factors of stability and social growth”.

What can be done in concrete terms by the EU? Italy is striving to further raise the increase in funds from 12 to 18 billion Euros allocated by the European Commission to the Southern shore of the Mediterranean.

The 2014-2020 financial plan is only now being

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expedited and already in this first phase I have perceived a widespread awareness among my EU colleagues of the need to allocate as many resources as possible to programmes involving the South Mediterranean. Several such programmes are already under way, like the initiatives launched with the G8 Deauville Partnership and the actions implemented at bilateral level.

In the countries in which the Arab Spring was successful, there are drives towards Islamic fundamentalism, as can be witnessed in the Egyptian elections. Do you fear that this might undermine these countries’ path towards democracy? How can Italy support and assist this transition?

The picture in the Arab Spring countries is and remains complex. Indeed, despite the initial euphoria, the outcome of the transition – and therefore the stability of the single countries and consequently of the entire area – must still convincingly prove to be capable of handling the political, economic and social problems that triggered the Arab Springs in a sufficiently effective and timely manner and, I might add, also the ensuing expectations, first and foremost those of local populations.

The risk therefore lies in that the possible failure to meet the legitimate expectations of the people and of civil society might disrupt these countries’ social cohesion and their development of a democratic process.

We should not however be pessimistic. Rather, we should firmly and resolutely support the new leaderships issuing from the Arab Spring, while warding off the rise of forces adverse to us and our values that might take advantage of this “settlement” phase. New moderate Islamic parties rightfully demand respect for their countries’ identity and dignity and consequently the implementation of forms of partnerships with the West that might reflect this attitude and not be felt as “imposed”.

Italy can play an extraordinarily important role in this aspect by virtue of our traditional approach based on our respect for different cultures and our propensity to dialogue and to listen, putting us at a vantage point compared to all our partners. You were mentioning Egypt.

It is not by chance that this country is now having to come to terms with a widespread frustration that is mainly generated by the economic crisis. We are aware of the risks connected to the possible evolutions of this scenario and we’re doing our share. On the 21st of February, I met with my Egyptian counterpart Kemal Amr and during our talks we delved into several initiatives aimed at enhancing our bilateral collaboration and I reiterated Italy’s commitment to re-launch Egypt’s economy and tourism not only on a bilateral level but also by continuously supporting Egypt’s requests for financial aid both with our European partners and with Washington and international financial

Italian Foreign Minister Giulio Terzi di Sant’Agata

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The Mediterranean Basin is the millennium-old crossroads of peoples and cultures and the cradle of the three main monotheistic religions.

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institutions. The talks were followed up with immediate action after they were concluded, we met with Italian economic institutions and companies interested in the Egyptian market, including the Ministry for Economic Development (MISE), the Department of Tourism of the Prime Minister’s Office, ENIT, SACE, SIMEST, Confindustria, Unioncamere, ANCE, Cassa Depositi e Prestiti, Assafrica, Promos and another fifty-or-some Italian large and medium-sized companies (including Poste Italiane, ENEL, Italcementi, Tenaris), with a broad representation from the tourism sector, including Visemar, the Grimaldi Group, Federviaggio, Astoi.

The freedom of religion of minorities, especially of the Christian minorities, has been one of the Italian foreign policy priorities of these last few years. What are the new dangers and the new opportunities brought by the wind of change that is sweeping across the Arab world?

The Mediterranean Basin is the millennium-old crossroads of peoples and cultures and the cradle of the three main monotheistic religions.

Today it is at the epicentre of historical changes that also uphold the full recognition of human rights, including the freedom of religion.

And this is where Italy’s activities take shape, in the midst of this sea and its natural vocation for tolerance and dialogue, at a time in which the area’s ongoing changes are highlighting precisely diversity as the factor representing the Mediterranean’s major wealth.

For years now, Italy has been engaged on several fronts. At the United Nations, for example, we actively support the “Alliance of Civilizations” which activated a specific regional strategy for the Mediterranean. Instead, at European Union level, many inter-cultural and inter-religious initiatives are implemented through the Anna Lindh Euro-Mediterranean Foundation, which was established under the aegis of the Barcelona Process and is now under the responsibility of the Union for the Mediterranean.

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Another aspect that should not be underestimated are the bilateral relations with our neighbours of the Southern Mediterranean with which Italy establishes a tight network of contacts, dialogue and exchanges on a daily basis. In Cairo, in January, I met with the top representatives of the Islamic and Coptic communities and found a great convergence of opinions on the need to make a deep-reaching effort to educate people to tolerance and dialogue and also a considerable appreciation for the role played by Italy in this field.

Many have raised the problem of women’s rights in the Arab world and the danger that some countries might be backtracking in this respect. What is your opinion on this?

It was precisely a woman, the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Tawakkol Karman, who proved to me that it will be them and the young, as the initiators of the Arab Spring, that will continue along the path undertaken in January 2011.

That’s what she told me during a meeting that will remain etched in my memory due to the resolution, confidence and serenity with which the young 32-year old woman explained how a regime like the one in Yemen can change precisely thanks to the drive of ordinary people.

The challenge, which should not be underestimated, consists in the capacity of the new political leaderships that have emerged during these last few months to drive these processes towards the empowerment of people in a fully democratic system guaranteeing especially women with full civil, political, economic and social rights.

At the end of the interview, Terzi addressed some words of praise to Papers of Dialogue.

“It is a wonderful publication and a brilliant editorial initiative and I very much rely on the fact that this initiative might also lead to a direct collaboration with the Foreign Ministry and I hope that you’ll have me again on your pages”.

We’ll take that as a promise.

Geopolitics

The post-global scenario

by Gianluca Sadun Bordoni

Having laid aside the illusion of a Eurocentric convergence among the cultures of the world, it has now become necessary to identify a new model. Arab countries will have to undertake the path towards democracy in the full respect of human rights and cultural divergences while the West will have to accept different interpretations of democracy.

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O

ne of the biggest mistakes in the way in which the European culture looked at the globalization process, in nineties of the twentieth century, was believing that such a process would have led to a progressive convergence of the world’s cultures. The illusion of a final triumph of the Western political and economic model – a winner in the Cold War generated the prophecy that “the end of history” (Fukuyama) was imminent. All the planet’s societies and cultures would have – sooner or later – converged towards a liberal democracy and market economy.

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Fukuyama and the end of history Following philosophers such as Hegel and Kojève, the American political scientist Francis Fukuyama affirmed, firstly in an essay published in 1989 and then in 1992 in his book The End of History and the Last Man, his controversial theory according to which the end of the Cold War had ended in the triumph of Western liberal democracy seen as “as the final form of human government”. In the past twenty years, Fukuyama’s theory of “the end of history” has sparked a vehement intellectual debate, which is not concluded yet.

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Although this idea was being maintained across the Western world, it undoubtedly found a fertile ground in Europe, nurturing the foreign policy of the European Union and the idea that it would represent a new type of power, the “civil power”, capable of expanding and asserting itself without the use of force.In the Mediterranean area especially, the nineties defined the strategy of the Barcelona Process, launched in 1995 in that city, according to the assumption that a homogenous, Eurocentric civilization could be established in the Mediterranean basin.

Following the shock caused by the 9/11 attacks, this vision progressively experienced a crisis; hence, the attempt of relaunching a Euro-Mediterranean partnership on a more equal footing with the Union of the Mediterranean (2008) did not reap the expected fruit. A clear sign of the failure of this strategy was the European silence vis à vis the Arab Spring in 2011.

The consequences of the serious economic crisis, which occurred in the United States in 2008, have relentlessly shown the weakness of the European Union, its character of “fair weather construction”, putting in jeopardy its survival, as the redistribution of the world power is moving in a counter-Western direction.

All in all, the unipolar moment of Europe is over. And the time has come to turn towards the Mediterranean with a different outlook, especially after the Arab Spring. We must consider a plurality of cultures that overwhelm the Euro-Mediterranean space.

From a strategic standpoint, the cycle of Arab revolutions is taking place within a double process: a) from the bipolarism of the Cold War to multipolarism; b) from the reference to a global system to a plurality of regional orders, not necessarily subordinated to a general hegemonic order.

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The Barcelona Process The Barcelona Process was introduced in 1995 by the Ministers of Foreign Affairs of the European Union and Mediterranean countries in order to provide a framework for cooperation and dialogue among the members. In 2004, it evolved into the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP).

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1 Cfr. Barcelona Plus.

Toward a EuroMediterranean Community of Democratic States, EuroMesco Report, April 2005 2 A. Davutoğlu, Turkish Vision of Regional and Global Order: Theorethical Background and Practical Implementation, in “Political Reflection”, 1, n.2, 2011, p. 41 3 A Partnership for Democracy and Shared Prosperity with the Southern Mediterranean, COM (2011) 200 final, March 2011, p. 11.

The new approach needs to be supported by precise incentives (“more for more”) 12 | Papers of Dialogue

As regards the Mediterranean, this means that we are heading towards a region dominated by a “post-Western balance”, whereby the role of Western powers will be downgraded, to the benefit of new political stakeholders, such as Russia and China. This scenario could be dubbed “post-global”, with no relation to a global balance, a bipolar one (as during the Cold War), or a multipolar one. The regional autonomy of the Mediterranean, which arose at the end of the Cold War, is doomed to change its sign. The illusion of establishing a Eurocentric, homogenous civilization – a prevailing idea at the beginning of the nineties of the twentieth century – disappeared together with the “disarmament” of identities, which many Euro-Mediterranean ideologists wanted to counterpose to the universally shared idea of an “inevitable clash of civilizations”1.

We need a new model, beyond both convergence and the clash of civilizations, based on the quest for a coexistence of diverse cultures, more in line with a “realistic” vision of international relations. Quoting the Turkish Foreign Affairs Minister Davutoğlu, “a Eurocentric cultural approach cannot be shaping the future of humanity”2.

Hence, two conclusions may be drawn. The first one is that the democratization process in the Mediterranean should always be supported by Western countries, both because it is in harmony with its core values, and because the way to “authoritarian modernization” of Arab countries is gone

forever. The outcome of the transition to democracy, being still uncertain, is not disconnected from the attitude of the West, which can obviously condition it. Relaunching a ‘Partnership for Democracy and Shared Prosperity’ with the Southern Mediterranean is a praiseworthy intention of the European Union, just like the fundamental idea of a “new approach”, carefully focused on the implementation of factual projects: “A fresh view of the regional situation demands that the positive elements of the Barcelona Process, together with those of the Union for the Mediterranean be integrated in a new approach. The regional co-operation which proved to be the most effective was based on projects that delivered concrete benefits – in environment, energy, transport, trade and social dialogue”3.

It is primary that international aid be focused on the path towards democracy and to ensure that Arab countries have a greater respect for human rights. The same holds true, of course, for the broad aid plan for the Middle East, promised by Barack Obama.

The second conclusion that may be drawn is the desired democratization of Arab countries, which should oppose all kinds of fundamentalism, yet not be in blatant contrast with Islamic principles. The same occurred, in the past decade, to non-Arab Islamic countries which followed the avenue of democratization, as did Turkey, for instance.

The success of Islamic (non-fundamentalist) groups in Tunisia and in Egypt confirms the fact that the only democracy possible is an “Islamic democracy”, and it is around this concept that it is necessary to work.

This means that in order to continue promoting its values, democracy and human rights, Europe must be ready to accept interpretations of such values which differ from the secular model that dominated in Europe in the twentieth century.

Geopolitics

The gilded world shines no longer

by Christopher M. Davidson

T

he Gulf monarchies must no longer be regarded as a regional exception to the Arab Spring uprisings and the political turbulence spreading throughout other parts of the Middle East. Several key developments in the past few months and weeks instead point to a protracted and intensifying struggle between the sitting, autocratic regimes, and increasingly vocal reformers and disaffected sections of national populations. Declining political stability in the Gulf monarchies will have important ramifications for the region’s economic development path, especially the foreign investment, financials, real estate and tourism-focused sectors in diversifying post-oil economies. Declining political stability may also have ramifications for the region’s geopolitical situation, with Iran relations likely to worsen as the monarchies seek to bolster their external security guarantees – mostly involving western powers.

The early signs are that the sitting regimes in the Gulf monarchies are largely unwilling to implement meaningful political reforms. Instead, the wealthier monarchies can be expected to ramp up their public spending, especially on increased salaries for nationals and other pecuniary benefits. In some cases the wealthier monarchies will also offer financial assistance to poorer neighbouring monarchies in order to quell riots. In parallel to increased spending, all six of

the Gulf monarchies will increasingly resort to repressing voices of dissent. It is likely that over the next several months a large number of bloggers, academics, and other opponents will be arrested, while demonstrations and riots will be put down using increasingly violent measures.

Up until 2011, the Gulf monarchies enjoyed relative political stability, with few of their governments having need to resort to repressive measures, at least compared to other authoritarian states in the region. Much of this stability was derived from a social contract in which national wealth (mostly derived from hydrocarbon export revenues) was redistributed by governments to citizens.

Stability was also bolstered by the generally favourable reputations enjoyed by the various ruling families. In particular, rulers and their relatives built upon their religious legitimacy and historic roots as tribal leaders.

The early 2011 uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt, and Yemen nonetheless sparked a number of incidents in the Gulf monarchies, ranging from the arrests of dissident bloggers and academics in the most resource-rich Gulf monarchies to full blown street protests in the poorer Gulf monarchies. While the populations of the Gulf monarchies have not suffered from poverty and deprivation to anywhere near the extent of the populations of the Arab republics, there has nonetheless been mounting frustration with the

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In many cases there have been visible and deep divisions between the Gulf monarchies on how best to cope with increasing pressures for reform.

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Over the next few weeks and months the protests are likely to intensify, especially if the government fails to implement any real changes resulting from the report.

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lack of meaningful job opportunities for citizens, an increasing wealth gap between rich and not-so-rich, and increasing discussion (often using difficult to censor social media and satellite television) of corruption within the ruling elites. In some cases increased government spending has been used to appease the protestors, often in parallel with promises of limited political reforms. In other cases, however, protests have been met with violent coercion and multiple fatalities. While there has been some collective action on the part of the loosely organized Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) union, in many cases there have been visible and deep divisions between the Gulf monarchies on how best to cope with increasing pressures for reform. In part this has been due to their slightly varied socioeconomic and political circumstances.

By far the biggest challenge to a Gulf monarchy has been in Bahrain. Catalysed by the first wave of Arab Spring revolutions, dozens of thousands took to the streets of Bahrain on February 14th 2011. Crucially these initial protests were focused on these reforms rather than with the fall of the ruling family. However, following a violent crackdown on further protests over the following weeks, the opposition intensified, with hundreds of thousands of protestors grinding Bahrain’s economy to a halt. The heavy-handed response by the Bahraini government has since been regarded as unprecedented in its harshness. A number of foreign soldiers were hired – mainly from Pakistan – to bolster Bahrain’s security forces; the main focal point of the opposition (a monument at one of the capital’s central roundabouts) was destroyed, and a few thousand troops from Saudi Arabia and the UAE were invited into Bahrain, under the guise of a GCC defence force.

Since then, there have been sporadic clashes and further fatalities. Significantly, the population of Bahrain appears firmly divided along sectarian lines, with many Sunnis continuing to support the regime. The sectarian divide has also been used, with some success, by the government to persuade the neighbouring Gulf monarchies and the international community that if it falls then a Shia-dominated Bahraini government would

become a de facto ally of Iran. In parallel to these coercive measures the king also appointed an independent commission led by Cherif Bassiouni and a team of international lawyers to investigate allegations of human rights abuses. The report took several months to compile, apparently providing the king with a useful defence from his critics. Finally released on 23rd November 2011, the report concluded that the Bahraini government had

Geopolitics

indeed used ‘excessive force’ and torture.

However, it fell short of naming key individuals and blaming specific offices. The opposition appears to view the report as a time wasting mechanism and continues to complain that several hundred dissidents remain in prison.

Over the next few weeks and months the protests are likely to intensify, especially if the government fails to implement any real changes resulting from the report. The

dismissal of the prime minister – an uncle of the king who has served as unelected prime minister for over 40 years – has emerged as a key opposition demand, but the king is unlikely to be able to meet this, given the prime minister’s close ties with Saudi Arabia and his support from conservatives within Bahrain.

The World Trade Center, Bahrain

Twitter: @dr_david

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The possible integration between desert and city

by Giulio Sapelli

I

n these months so rich of events in North Africa and in the Middle East, I have been increasingly reminded of one of the central chapters in the fascinating book by an old Lebanese friend, George Corm. The chapter is entitled: “L’émergence de l’État wahabite: la victoire du désert sur la ville” (“The emergence of the Wahabite State: the Victory of the Desert over the City”) and is contained in one of today’s most topical books by the same Corm, published in Paris in 1989: L’Europe et l’Orient,

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de la balkanisation à la libanisation, histoire d’une modernité inaccomplie (Europe and the East, from balkanisation to lebanonisation, the story of an unaccomplished modernity). The underlying assumption was simple and deep: Ibd Saud IV accomplished what had previously appeared to be impossible: to have the Bedouin social order co-exist with economic modernization thanks to the creation of a tribalized State observant, now as in the past, of the power games existing in the Gulf area

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and in the whole of the Middle East. It was and still is possible to do this by conceding to the West every possible recognition on the structure of the economy but without yielding anything on the level of ideals and the supernatural by overturning any theory of modernization whereby the economy preshapes society. On the contrary: it was the desert, the throbbing heart of Islam, that won over the city which, according to neo-classical economists, was otherwise inevitably expected

to drive society towards secularisation. The events now ongoing in North Africa, in the Middle East and first and foremost in Egypt, confirm Corm’s hypothesis and give it the endorsement it needs to understand the power games of the future. Indeed, an increasingly less Islamicized city produced the cultural divide within the society that was so overdisplayed by the mass media that it deceived the world into believing that the city itself had absorbed all of society. Indeed, the “Arab

Shibam City, Yemen.

The city is famous for its mudbrick-made tower houses. It is a Unesco World Heritage Site. Most of its houses originate from the sixteenth century.

Shibam is often called "the Manhattan of the desert".

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Kingdom Tower, Riyadh, KSA

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Springs” were a sort of revolt of secularised urban middle classes against tradition, corruption and unemployment. However, all this failed to produce a spurt of Westernization and modernization. Quite the opposite: it provoked the unrelenting radicalisation of Islam in desert and rural areas that now, after the fall of the old military and familistic dictatorships, are able to unveil the specific relationship that exists in Islamic societies between civil society and the State and that, according to the customary dictates of Westernization, continues to be incomprehensible. According to Western views, civil society arises independently from the State: it is a pre-Statal entity on which the market and private property founded the mechanisms regulating individual and associated interests that only through the formation of a political society and a consequent political party system would subsequently lay the grounds for a State thus kept institutionally separate from civil society. Today, precisely in Europe and in the United States, Tea Party members and the “Indignados” are continuously talking about the rising of civil society against the State and the ruling classes. In the past, Habermas had gone to the point of philosophically systemizing this divide by referring to self-reflective forms when speaking of the modernization process that would come to replace the gemeinschaftlichen (community cultures) with individual lifestyles. This is the moment in which the market-oriented civil society prevails over all forms of tradition. Even granting this assumption to be valid in the West, in the Islamic East a similar approach is confirmed to be totally inadequate. In Muslamic states, social society has always existed in unison with the State. Not only institutionally, with no formal separation between the Church and the State, but mainly because individual lifestyles are nothing else but the reflection of tradition, except for in the case of deeply Westernized urban middle classes which nonetheless represent only a demographic minority. The “Arab Springs” are a sort of attempt to overturn the whole history of Islamic societies: an impossible feat precisely because of the advent of urbanization during

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Habermas Jürgen Habermas (1929) is one of the most influential contemporary philosophers. His vast work deals with a wide range of issues, from epistemology and aesthetics to sociology and political thought. He is particularly famous for his books The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere (1962) and The Theory of Communicative Action (1981), which are crucial to understand the emergence of “modernity”.

the twentieth century. We have known this ever since the seminal studies on Istanbul by the great Kemal Karpat who showed that, anthropologically speaking, urbanization was nothing more than the victory of the countryside (which originated the urban drift of huge masses) over the city. In Turkey, the advancement of Erdogan’s party fully confirmed this theory. The “Arab Springs” demonstrations merely reveal the forming of a cleavage, a deep-set fault dividing society’s Westernized middle classes. And this is the real novelty: the revelation of this anthropological, demographic and social divide. Nonetheless, this does not reverse the direction of history, which is instead headed towards a deep-reaching integration of society and the people “of the desert and of the countryside” into a State that is not separated from civil society but is actually increasingly compounded with it. This integration is now guaranteed by something that the previous military and familistic-tribal dictatorships lacked: political democracy. It materializes through the principle of majority. This is what the implementation of democratic procedures leads to: questioning the role of democracy as a social and political regime grounded on the respect of diversity and cohabitation and whose foremost manifestation is the separation between the State and the Church. The most relevant consequence of the “Arab Springs” will be of democratically bringing to the fore hierocracies, i.e. the rule of clerics supported by the Army, hidden under the veil of electoral procedures.

These are the counter-intuitive effects of history that Westerners are often not subtle-minded enough to see coming, blinded as they are by the confines of rationalism.

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New Italians with international roots

by Rassmea Salah

E

ver since the XIX century, Italy has always been a country of emigration, with more than three million Italians emigrated to the USA, Canada, Argentina, Brazil, Australia and Germany. Even after the Second World War, the most widely shared Italian dream was still emigrating to America, considered to be “the land of freedom, prosperity and hope” by any Italian.

resource that is strengthening Italy. He even invited many delegations of New Italians to the Quirinale Palace (the residence of the President of the Republic in Rome), conveying to them the important message of including them within our society without discriminations of sorts. Almond eyes, black skin or a veil do not make New Italians any less Italian than their native fellow citizens.

During the last fifty years, however, a new trend has set in. Italy has become the beacon for migration from all over the world: Africa, the Middle East, the Maghreb, China, Eastern Europe… especially in the last fifteen years, the flow of immigrants has been rising steeply and exponentially. However, the most interesting phenomenon now seems to be their children, the so-called second generation of immigrants or better said, “New Italians”, i.e. citizens of international origin.

In addition to institutional support, this issue has lately received deep media coverage on what appears to be a fully-fledged campaign, going to the point of collecting signatures for a petition to pass a law giving Italian citizenship to those who were born in Italy or who have been living here since they were children. Although it was aimed at achieving a political impact, the success of this campaign shows an ongoing social and a cultural change in the civil society which now seems to be ready to include the children of immigrants and to consider them Italian also from a legal point of view.

Was Italy ready for this?

At the beginning, it really didn’t seem to be.

However at present, Italian President of the Republic Giorgio Napolitano has been raising this issue repeatedly, sensitizing people on the unprecedented challenge of considering New Italians as a new important and vital

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Indeed, the current Law on Citizenship reveals a striking paradox: if you belonged to those fifth – or even sixth – generation Italians born abroad, in the countries to which Italians emigrated centuries ago, even if you didn’t

Geopolitics

speak Italian and had never been to Italy, you obtained Italian citizenship at birth enabling you to vote in political elections. On the other hand, if you are born in Italy, speak the language, attend Italian schools and live in Italy, then you have to wait at least 18 years just to apply for citizenship. After that, you have to sit there waiting and hoping to get it.

Culturally speaking, I can see some progress and quite a few improvements being made.

Especially in these last few years, I have seen many projects aimed at enhancing the teaching of native mother tongues in public schools. Thanks to a project called “Apriti Sesamo” (“Open, Sesame!”), many Arabic and Chinese language courses were provided free of charge to the children of Arab and Chinese immigrants whose parents were afraid that their babies might forget their linguistic and cultural heritage. At least thirteen public schools in Milan, ranging from primary to secondary schools, applied for this project financed by the Cariplo and ISMU Foundations.

One of the other interesting projects was called “Il razzismo è una brutta storia” (“Racism is an Ugly Story”) which was launched and financed by Feltrinelli, founded in 1954 one of the biggest publishing houses in Italy. Not only was this project aimed at launching a widespread campaign against racism, but it also promoted the social inclusion of many immigrants and New Italians by offering them jobs in the very same Feltrinelli. It was really great fun to go Christmas shopping in the Feltrinelli bookshop across the street from the Duomo of Milan and find a veiled cashier originally from Morocco.

It was a surprise; something new for Italy, a positive sign of change and multiculturalism.

Last but not least, we have many New Italian sportsmen representing Italy all over the world: just think of Andrew Howe, a black athlete specialized in the long jump, born in Los Angeles but grown up in Italy. And what

El Shaarawy

Fiona May

about Alex Schwazer? A blond speed walk racer born in Sterzing (South Tyrol) whose first native language is German. And Fiona May, another long jump athlete who was originally British, being born in Slough, England. Or Stephan El Shaarawy, a professional footballer who plays as a striker for ‘Serie A’ club Milan, who was born in Italy from Egyptian parents.

Even Italian beauty contests are incorporating New Italians: let’s not forget Denny Mendez, the first black Miss Italia (1996) who was originally from Santo Domingo.

What else can we say? During these last decades, Italian identity has changed face.

Literally.

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Interreligious and intercultural dialogue

Jesus in the light of Islam

by Angelo Iacovella

Few Westerners are aware of the extraordinary importance of Jesus in Islam. The Holy Quran devotes many verses to Jesus and to his mother, the Virgin Mary. Moreover, both Muslims and Christians recognize in Jesus the Messiah, the man who is yet to come at the end of time. The differences between Jews, Christians and Muslims should never obscure the fact that all three major monotheistic religions descend from the same sources, sharing a common inspiration.

Interreligious and intercultural dialogue View of Jerusalem

A

s it is widely known, the traditions of the three major monotheistic religions largely intertwine and overlap, thus bearing witness to a shared heritage of which they are the jealous keepers. Many of the figures elevated by Islamic theology to the rank of prophets are already inscribed in the Old Testament. So for example, the Quran tells the story of Adam, Noah, Abraham, David, Salomon, Job, Joseph, Moses, Aaron, Isaac and Ishmael.

The stories referred to them do not coincide perfectly in the two Scriptures (Quran and Torah), as the Muslims’ Holy Book often draws from non-canonical sources like Jewish popular stories and the Talmud, at times re-elaborating and interpreting them in a peculiar way.

Furthermore, the New Testament echoes the figures of Zechariah, of John the Baptist and of course of Jesus Christ, the son of Mary, he too listed among the prophets and messengers that preceded Muhammad’s mission.

The figure of Jesus in the Quran By virtue of a well-known law of optics, when a ray of light strikes a prism it breaks down. Well, if we look at the figure of Jesus in the light of Islam, through the “spiritual prism” of the Quran, at first sight the image that issues from this change of perspective appears to us to be different from the one that we Westerners are accustomed to.

Nonetheless, between the “Muslim” Jesus at the service of Allah and the Christ depicted in the four Gospels, there are more similarities than differences so long as we obviously don’t stop at the literal meaning of the texts. The two overlapping “images” not only do not cancel each other out but actually broaden and enrich our “vision” of Christ.

The Muslim world’s Holy Book devotes many verses to Jesus, the son of Mary, and to his mother the Virgin Mary. This handful of texts are essential in taking stock of the main doctrinal analogies and differences between Islam and Christianity in their common approach to the figure that both religions call the “Messiah”, the man who is yet to come at the end of time.

The repository of the divine message and sent to the children of Israel to teach “The book and wisdom, the Torah and the Gospel” (C 3: 48), the Jesus of the Quran is shown to us to be endowed

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Interreligious and intercultural dialogue

Mary holding the Child Jesus in her arms. Notice the pyre surrounding the newborn’s head, which stands to symbolize his spiritual election.

Ascension of Jesus.

Miniature by Ottoman Historiographer Sayyid Luqmān ‘Ashûrî, from the Zubdah al-Tawârîkh, dedicated to Sultan Murad III in 1583. sixteenth century.

Museum of Turkish and Islamic Arts, Istanbul, Turkey.

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with absolutely unique prerogatives that convert him into an extraordinary being. He is conceived through the “insufflation” of the Spirit of God, without the intervention of a father and without having Mary sacrifice her virginity, so that “Indeed, the example of Jesus to Allah is like that of Adam” (C 3: 59), considering that they were both created in a way that was out of the ordinary. After being born “on a high ground” (C 23: 50) in the shade of a palm tree, the Child Jesus talks in his crib to defend the honor of Mary, who was the victim of a “great slander” (C 4: 156). He manipulates a bit of clay and shapes it into a bird that flies off after having been blown with his life-giving breath and with the permission of God. Once an adult, he heals the man that was born blind and the leper and of course resuscitates the dead. To the surprise of the Apostles, he then has a “table spread with food” descend from Heaven (reflecting a rather original interpretation of the Eucharist: see C 5: 114). These are all episodes, hints, fragments and references proposed by the Quran, showing between the lines not so much the self-evident influence of the New Testament as much as a “contamination” between apocryphal Gospels and the Quranic narrative of the life of Jesus.

As already stated, there are analogies but also differences that are worthy of mention. For Muslims, Jesus (in Arabic: ‘Îsâ b. Maryam) is not at all the Son of God as, by definition, the Highest “is neither begotten nor is born” (lam yalid wa lam yûlad: C 112: 3), thus making the opposite assumption logically and theologically loathsome: so much so that, by word of Mohammed’s mouth, Christians are warned of the following: “Oh people of the Scripture! Don’t be extravagant in your religion or say about Allah except the truth [...]. So believe in Allah and in His messengers and do not say «Three»!” (4: 171).

Christ’s mission is thus fulfilled in proclaiming to the people of Israel the absolute, dogmatic and universal principle of the uniqueness of God, because this, and none other, is the rightful Path.

But as it unfailingly happens to all prophets, in pursuing his mission, ‘Îsâ b. Maryam is faced with the hostility of part of his people and is called upon to defend himself, with the help of God, from those who pursue him with the intention of

killing him; “and they did not kill Him, nor did they crucify Him but [another] was made to resemble Him to them. Rather God raised him to Himself” (C 4: 157-158), underscores the Quran in a crucial section transposing the GnosticDocetist doctrine of the “apparent death”.

Therefore, Islam ignores the redemptive “background story” behind the paradox of the Golgotha as well as the “enigma” – to use a term dear to St. Paul – of the resurrection of Christ on the third day. Having ascended to Heaven above without tasting the poisoned chalice of death, the Messiah will thence come back to Earth but not before the Day of Judgment and his coming, for believers and misbelievers alike, will be the impending “foreboding of the Hour”.

The Christ of the Sufis There is no doubt that these particular traits place Jesus on a level that is apart from all the other prophets worshiped in the Muslim tradition, including Muhammad himself, who all the same deserves the privilege of having announced the advent of the last and most perfect heavenly religion insofar as it encompasses the preceding ones and fulfills them. Nor is it surprising that some Muslim theologians and commentators have at times “minimized” the position of Jesus through an interpretation of his figure that was aimed at downplaying all his “possible spiritual wealth”: an incommensurable wealth which instead did not escape the Sufis, the knowledgeable mystics of Islam.

Sufism (tasawwuf) would take it upon itself to return to Christ what belonged to Christ and unhesitatingly recognize him as the ascetic par excellence, the poor man “needy to God’s knowledge” (al-faqîr ilâ Allâh), the hermit that undertakes the path of the soul, the herald of a Spirit that blows where it wills.

For some of them, including al-Hakîm alTirmidhî (who died in 892), Jesus can be considered the “Seal of Sainthood” (khâtam alawliyâ’), as Muhammad is the Seal of the “prophets” (khâtam al-anbiyâ’). For Ibn ‘Arabî (who died in Damascus in 1240) “whoever is taken ill with Jesus cannot heal”.

Muhammad bears witness to God with his tongue and Jesus with his heart.

Interreligious and intercultural dialogue

The material and spiritual challenges of European Islam

by Imam Yahya Pallavicini

I

n pursuing an authentic knowledge of Islam, we may take into consideration the value of two options arising from different plans, both of which are of great utility, even today. History teaches us that the most profitable relations between the Western world and the Islamic community (without of course overlooking transversal experiences like those of the Western Muslims in the Medieval Italy of Frederick II and in Spain’s Andalucia) often arose from an encounter with the religious leaders of Islam, the spiritual masters, the saints and the scholars of sacred science. Only the living authorities in possession of the heritage of Islamic knowledge can legitimately hand down the orthodox doctrine of the Revelation in an inspired and effective way, sweeping away modern-day prejudices, stereotypes and instrumentalizations.

In the meantime, we cannot forget a second possible way of knowing each other through the path of economics and more specifically through international trade, which brings with it an intellectual, religious and more comprehensive anthropological exchange, thus contributing to enriching everybody on all levels. Therefore, even now, getting to know the economic principles of Islam and the commercial interactions with the Muslim world represents a providential

opportunity to match and compare the stands of Oriental and Western Muslims, the present or future citizens of Europe.

On the other hand, in a real and not a virtual economy, capable of considering the social needs of people without reducing them to mere statistical simplifications, the role of religious values gains an extraordinary importance. The benefit of having an access to spirituality and abidance by sacred rules still now represents an added value for many, as well as a real social need frequently affecting attitudes and behaviours much more than any effort to satisfy numerous material needs.

On these grounds, it is possible to develop economic methodologies consistent with the Islamic principles and complying with European standards, promote ethics in business, trade and finance, endorse a cross-cultural and interreligious perspective and foster knowledge of the authentic Islam. Indeed, it is important to reiterate that Islam’s economic doctrine cannot represent an alternative aimed at pulling down the existing economic system on the thrust of ideological suggestions dating back to a century ago, nor should it be seen as a do-gooder surrendering to Islam’s cultural divide in Europe but should rather be viewed as an opportunity

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An Islamic contribution is also needed in order to qualify social relations on the basis of respect and nobility of intention.

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Interreligious and intercultural dialogue

...

Frederick II Frederick II (1194 - 1250) was an Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, called stupor mundi (wonder of the world) by his contemporaries for his extraordinary intelligence and culture.

Patron of the arts, science and culture, he was fluent in Arabic and a keen admirer of Arab and Muslim culture. From Palermo, the capital of his Kingdom of Sicily, he promoted a revival of European and Mediterranean culture, contributing to the emergence of Italian language and culture.

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for a forward-looking revision of the current economic model, thus avoiding the periodic catastrophes produced by the short-sighted voracity of financial speculation.

Islam’s contribution to a sound, balanced and forward-looking management of the European economy also entails paying attention to public welfare policies in which Muslims are called upon to be active players and not only beneficiaries, as well as to public health care, which cannot be sacrificed to the needs of profit. Safeguarding social welfare and public health not only represents an ethical necessity inevitably arising from a religious perspective such as that of Islam, based on the sacredness of life and of Creation, but also from a long-term socioeconomic interest, as environmental degradation seen from a social, health, landscape and cultural perspective also curbs the potential of economic development, revealing it to be only partially disguised as short-lived immediate advantages.

Similarly, the realm of cross-cultural exchange and of the organization of Islamic religious associations is, and ever will be, a privileged playing field in which to foster a constructive and dynamic enhancement of Islam’s presence in Europe. This can be achieved through the growing awareness of a pluralist society, addressed as an opportunity for a profitable exchange of skills and experiences, along with an organizational capacity that, without stifling the spiritual nature of religions under the pall of bureaucracy, might nonetheless build sound and resilient structures on which to base the comparison of different political institutions, other religious communities and different expressions of civil society.

Today, in Europe, the Islamic community must find an intelligent and incisive way to react and

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actively take part in economic, financial and commercial dynamics, facilitating business ventures based on an orderly integration of Koranic prescriptions, the Prophetic Sunnah and the existential responsibilities of every man and woman. Moreover, it is the task of the European Islamic community to give value to economic and cultural training activities with a view to favouring global development and raising the quality of relations at all levels and in all realms of activity. Not only are the relations between Muslim immigrants and European citizens at stake but also those between European Muslims and immigrants of different creeds, between Muslim and non-Muslim Europeans and also between Muslim and non-Muslim immigrants. In synthesis, an Islamic contribution is also needed in order to qualify social relations on the basis of respect and nobility of intention.

International cooperation is a necessary prerequisite in favouring the cultural and civil growth of Europe’s Islamic community but is also essential to promote the achievement of the inter-religious and cross-cultural maturity of European citizens so that they might be enabled to identify with other religious denominations or with today’s widespread secularisation process.

Indeed, both Eastern and Western Governments can do much for European Islamic minorities and communities by implementing processes aimed at achieving a fully integrated citizenship and by pursuing a real freedom of religion, both in form and in substance. Muslims can in turn do a lot for Europe, once they become empowered, and their participation in comprehensive economic development strategies will constitute an added value in terms of sensitivity and balance in harmoniously compounding ethics, society and finance.

We must shoulder the task of growing a new generation of European Muslims, a new generation of entrepreneurs, managers and opinion-makers in the field of economics, finance, international trade, social policies, crosscultural education and inter-religious dialogue.

This will be our way of contributing to the virtuous maturity, social participation and economic development of Islamic minorities, feeling sure that the spiritual and material empowerment of European Muslims will coincide with the spiritual and material re-birth of Europe.

Interreligious and intercultural dialogue

The essence of interreligious dialogue

by Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran

A

t the beginning of the Third Millennium, Christianity and Islam are the two largest religions of the world.

We have to take into consideration the fact that the Muslims who are present in North America and Europe, are not there as passing immigrants but as definitively-settled citizens.

That means that they are our neighbors, in the sense of the Good Samaritan parable.

Living together, Muslim and Christians have a chance to know each other better, despite their differences and their diverse religious beliefs. For example, our Muslim friends are free to open a Bible and read it. They can become acquainted with Jesus Christ. They can enter a church and discover the beauty of our liturgy.

Therefore it is necessary that they have in front of them Christians who are coherent, able to witness that God is Love and only Love.

Without minimizing the differences which separate us, as well as the heritage of a difficult coexistence, Christians and Muslims can, without putting their specific religious convictions into brackets, meet the challenges of modernity in a

globalized world. Let us help each other!

Interreligious dialogue therefore can become a form of reciprocal emulation in the service to God and to the society.

But a question naturally arises: what is the essence of interreligious dialogue? It is not a question of being nice to the other. It is not a negotiation. It is not a strategy. It is rather an invitation to discover the seeds of the Word, the ray of the Truth, the signs of the presence of God in every brother and sister in humanity. With interreligious dialogue we are compelled to promote all positive and constructive relationships with persons and communities “…in order to learn to know each other and to enrich each other in obedience to the Truth and respect for the freedom of everyone” (Dialogue and Proclamation, n. 9).

Interreligious dialogue is not, therefore, the search for the smallest common denominator among religions (that would be relativism)! It is indeed the endeavor to know and to respect the convictions of the other and to recognize that God never ceases to be present and to be at work in the heart of every human person. This

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Interreligious dialogue therefore can become a form of reciprocal emulation in the service to God and to the society.

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Interreligious and intercultural dialogue

Interreligious meeting in Assisi, Italy

dialogue usually is carried out through four modalities: 1- the dialogue of life (I share the joys and sorrows of my neighbor belonging to another religion); 2- the dialogue of works (I collaborate in the well-being of the other. I meet the needs of those who, although belonging to other religions, are living in precariousness); 3- theological dialogue, when it is possible; 4- the dialogue of spiritualities.

Such an attitude, of course, cannot lead to relativize the Truth. For us Christians, Christ, the Son of God who became man, is the Way, the Truth and the Life (John 14, 6) and, for us, it is

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only in Him, that all men and women will find the fullness of religious life (NA, n. 3). But we recognize the value of positive elements present in many other religions as well. We regard “with sincere reverence those ways of conduct and of life, those precepts and teachings which, though differing in many aspects from the ones [the Church] holds and sets forth, … often reflect a ray of that Truth which enlightens all men” (NA, n. 2).

To realize such a program, partners must have a clear-cut idea of their own faith and be disposed to listen, to understand and to love their counterparts, and finally, to know and to respect each other’s differences.

Interreligious dialogue is therefore a providential

Interreligious and intercultural dialogue

call inviting us to deepen our own faith in order to be able to answer those who are asking for an account of our religion, that is: “be always ready to give an explanation to anyone who asks you for a reason for your hope” (1 Peter 3:14).

Believers should be, consequently, more inclined to a greater respect and understanding of diversity. They can contribute efficiently to correct erroneous images which exist, to overcome stereotypes and misconceptions which distort true knowledge of the other. Most of the problems between Christians and Muslims are due to ignorance. Too many of us, sometimes, do not know the content of the religions of the others or have not ever met believers of other religions! We have also to recognize that in reality we are reluctant to meet followers of other religions because we have a very approximate idea of our own religion. We could say the same as regards our Muslims friends. Of course, we cannot underevaluate violence perpetrated in the name of religion or the discrimination against religious minorities in countries where the majority religion enjoys a privileged status due to history. We are not naïve!

Only Christians, who have a clear idea of the content of their faith, are qualified to engage in interreligious dialogue: 1- Let us take advantage of the Catechism of the Catholic Church to deepen and nourish our faith, because we cannot dialogue in ambiguity.

Catechesis in parishes and teaching in seminaries and universities are particularly important.

2- We have to live according to our convictions.

We have to be credible believers. In interreligious dialogue we are exposed to the other’s gaze. We ask one another, “Who is your God, how do you live your religious faith in every day life?” – and

everyone must personally answer. Interreligious dialogue does not happen between religions, but between believers.

3- We mustn’t be shy in sharing our faith. A Muslim cannot renounce proclaiming the teachings of the Koran. A Christian cannot renounce proclaiming that Christ is the answer to the most fundamental questions, to the riddles of the human condition.

So believers, no matter whichever religion they belong to, are not competitors but partners, are ready not only to listen, but also to recognize what is good in the other. The Italian priest Andrea Santoro who was murdered in Turkey February 5 th 2006, declared that he found in his Muslim friends: “an instinctive sense of God and His Providence; spontaneous welcome of His word and His will; trusting abandonment to His guidance; daily prayer in the middle of one’s activity; certainty about the after life and resurrection; the sacredness of the family; the value of simplicity of the essential, of welcome and of solidarity”.

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So believers, no matter whichever religion they belong to, are not competitors but partners, are ready not only to listen, but also to recognize what is good in the other.

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Finally Christians and Muslims who dialogue are a richness for society. Together, they can give witness to prayer, help each other to behave as responsible citizens, work in order that religious freedom becomes more and more a reality, defend the family against aggressive policies which are undermining its solidity, fight together against illiteracy and disease. They are aware of their common responsibility for the moral formation of younger generations, teaching a pedagogy of peace.

So I borrow my prayerful wish for you from St. Paul: “May the Lord make your love increase and overflow for each other and everyone else” (1 Thessalonians, 3:12).

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Interreligious and intercultural dialogue

Building a culture of peace

by Daniele Nahum

I

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n the past years the Union of Young Jews of Italy (UGEI) has never failed to stress the significance of interreligious dialogue, because we believe it to be of crucial importance to our society. Only through this dialogue can we hope to banish prejudice and the culture of prejudice in all its manifestations.

Through the years we have therefore made every effort to foster a culture of dialogue among the different faiths which coexist in Italy and in its cities.

We have, in particular, been engaged in dialogue with our friends from Muslim youth associations for several years now. The subject to which our associations devote the most attention is the integration of those minorities, including religious and cultural minorities, which exist in our country.

Hans Jonas Hans Jonas (1903 – 1993) was an influential philosopher and historian of religion. He is particularly well-known for his The Gnostic Religion: The Message of the Alien God & the Beginnings of Christianity (1958), where he shed new light on the philosophical and religious movements of late antiquity known as ‘Gnosticism’. In his book The Imperative of Responsibility (1979), Jonas reflected on the moral crisis caused by contemporary civilization and stated the need for rediscovering the importance of ethics.

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This is an issue which affects us all, and one which is not, unfortunately, adequately addressed by Italy’s policy-makers.

A recent study conducted by CENSIS (Center for Social Studies and Policies) paints a picture of a country with an immigrant population of nearly 4 million, a country where one hundred fifty languages are spoken. This unprecedented snapshot of Italian society reveals the creeping re-emergence of anti-Semitism and unsettling Islamophobic incidents.

In order to suppress these trends, we believe Italy must not waste time in adopting an effective integration model, because those countries which most successfully integrated their different ethnic groups attained greater economic and cultural development than those societies which did not achieve integration.

Hence our belief that Italy must not waste any time in tackling this issue, which has a bearing on the future of the entire nation and no doubt also (and significantly so!) on the future of Judaism in Italy.

We aim to make significant progress to that end, bearing in mind Anthony Giddens’s principle that there are “no rights without responsibilities”, as we also hold that a citizen’s duty to society should never be forgotten. This has, in fact, always been a characteristic of Judaism within the many societies and cultures with which it has

Interreligious and intercultural dialogue International book fair, Turin, Italy

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Talmud coexisted: the effective commingling of the call for and the promotion of rights with an irreplaceable cultural presence and with unwavering attention to dialogue, civil obligations and what the great Jewish philosopher Hans Jonas dubbed the “ethics of responsibility”, which draws on a tradition which has always pervaded ethical and religious beliefs from the Talmud up until the present day.

What follows is an example of some of the instances of dialogue we have witnessed and/or driven.

Over the years we organized and took part in numerous initiatives geared toward fostering dialogue among peoples and cultures. For example, in January of 2008, on Remembrance Day we participated in a debate organized by PIME (Pontifical Institute for Foreign Missions), where an exhibition on “Islam’s Righteous Men” was being presented. On March 2, we discussed the integration of minorities in Italy with high-ranking government officials at the Center of Contemporary Jewish Documentation.

During the Turin International Book Fair, we set up a debate titled “Identity and minorities: a debate on youth in modern-day Italian society: Jews, Muslims and Protestants”.

The Talmud is one of the most important books of the Jewish tradition. While the Torah is considered by Jews the written law, the Talmud is regarded as collecting the oral law. It is a body of literature composed by the Mishna, which brings together Jewish religious and legal norms, and the Gemara, which discusses and elucidates the Mishna.

Furthermore, when we went from being members of youth associations to occupying important posts within our communities, we continued to walk the path of dialogue and to take a stand on behalf of our communities on important issues. For example, one of the first statements I made as Vice President of the Jewish Community of Milan was to the The Remembrance Day media, letting them know the The Remembrance Day, on 27th of community is in favor of the January, is an international construction of a mosque in memorial day for the victims of the Milan. We support the project Shoah (holocaust). because we believe the construction of a mosque could be a fundamentally enriching cultural element for all of Milan’s citizens. Lastly, it is my belief that pursuing mutually respectful dialogue among different cultures, in Italy and across the world, could be the best way to build a culture of peace which must stand in contrast to the culture of violence which has sadly taken hold in the past years.

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Twitter: @DanieleNahum

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Interreligious and intercultural dialogue

Aristotle, a common philosophical heritage for the Mediterranean

by Francesca Forte

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n searching for its roots, multicultural Europe must inevitably come face to face with its past, which is undoubtedly made up of wars, battles and conflicts but, above all, exchanges and journeys. I would like to use this space to look back on the story of one journey in particular through mare nostrum, the Mediterranean Sea: the medieval voyage Greek knowledge embarked upon, through the Arab world and all the way to the Latin world.

Baghdād was most certainly one of the major stops along the route, not only in the era of the Bayt al-Hikma, founded by Abbasid caliph al-Ma’mūn (who famously saw Aristotle himself appear before him in one of his dreams), but also later, during the Buyid dynasty (945-1055).

The latter period has been dubbed “Buyid renaissance” or “Islamic humanism” due to the

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very climate of cultural reawakening borne out by the multitude of schools of thought and literary circles which blossomed during that time. Another important characteristic of that period was the absorption of the Greek scientific and philosophical legacy and its educational model into an Islamic perspective.

This blend in turn gave rise to the culture of literary arts (adab), the mark of a society which had already undergone urbanization, and in which the cultural heritage of ancient wisdom (Greek and Sasanian alike) was remoulded within the Arab-speaking cultural sphere.

Incidentally, Baghdād was home to the first Aristotelian school which reached great heights in the tenth century, with Christian (Greek, Syriac and Arab speakers) and Muslim (Arab or Persian) scholars and scientists tackling issues

Interreligious and intercultural dialogue

such as the Greeks’ heritage and the structure of traditional knowledge. Many renowned figures sat at the helm of the school and headed intellectual circles as well as those dealing with translations from Greek and from Syriac (Abū Bishr Mattā Ibn Yunūs, Yahya ibn ‘Adī, al-Sijistāni, al-Tawhīdi, et alii).

Yet the voyage undertaken by Greek works and the cultural convergence that the reading and interpretation of these works implies did not end in the Mashriq. It found particularly fertile ground in Muslim Al-Andalus and during the Christian Reconquista, in that extraordinary movement known as translatio studii. The latter reached its peak between the twelfth century and the thirteenth century. Not just major Greek and Arab scientific texts, but also philosophical texts, commentaries and religious works were translated and disseminated in the knowledgethirsty Latin world, and contributed to the West’s philosophical coming of age1.

It is worth noting the scope and magnitude of this translation endeavor, which was a major driver of the West’s cultural reawakening. Though it is difficult to sum up the significance and extent of such a cultural phenomenon in just a few lines, some of the key elements which defined this period of fertile exchanges and renewed knowledge can be identified. Spain’s late-twelfth-century milieu represents a unicum of sorts given the commingling of Muslim, Jewish and Christian scholars: Arab-Andalusian thought which blossomed in the shadow of the Almohades’ power was a powerful vehicle for Greek thought in the West: the works and commentaries of Maimonides and Averroes (Ibn Rushd), to name but a few, are a fundamental part of European universities’ curricula2.

Nevertheless, Arabic-Latin translations’ contribution toward the understanding of Aristotle has been a contentious issue for many years: following a surge of enthusiasm for the “Eastern path” through which knowledge from the Greek world was to be transmitted integrally to the Latin world, it became clear that the contribution from Arabic translations was significantly smaller than that of translations directly from the Greek. Attributing a “chronological priority” to the transmission of Aristotelianism via the Arab world is not

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The Greek philosopher Aristotle (384 BC – 322 BC) is one of the fathers of Western philosophy. His writings encompass a vast range of subjects; his logic and rationalistic approach greatly contributed to shape the Western philosophical enterprise of understanding the world. His influence has been crucial also on Muslim philosophers such as Al Kindi, Ibn Sina, Al Farabi and Ibn Rushd. In the eleventh century, the Aristotelian philosopher Ibn Sina has been criticized by the Muslim theologian and mystic Al Ghazali in his Tahafut al-falasifa (The Incoherence of the Philosophers). Notwithstanding Ibn Rushd’s latter confutation of Al Ghazali, The Incoherence of the Philosophers is generally seen as marking the end of Arab Aristotelianism.

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feasible due to the fact that translations from Greek date back to the same period as those from Arabic, which is why years ago MinioPaluello stressed that we must let go of the legend of Arabic-Latin precedence3.

Recently this very issue sparked a controversy with the publishing of Sylvain Gouguenheim’s book4, which seeks to put a definitive end to the notion that the Arab world’s contribution to the transmission of Greek thought was key in the West’s rediscovery of Aristotle. The book generated vehement reaction on the part of many scholars both within the French media and the world of academia, through articles and writings in which the author comes under heavy criticism5, only to be supported by equally vocal proponents6. Said controversy bears witness to the issue’s topicality and to how easily it lends itself to different ideological interpretations, as the reconstruction of the transmission of knowledge has a direct bearing on the definition of Europe’s cultural roots.

Despite the historiographical caution it is necessary to exercise when assessing the contribution made by translations from Arabic, the fact remains that the so-called Corpus Vetustius, the collection of “older” translations of Aristotle’s works, largely comprises translations from Arabic; on the other hand, the Corpus Recentius, the newer collection, sees Arabic-Latin translations almost entirely replaced by Greek-Latin versions7. Furthermore, though the Arabic transmission of Aristotelianism was initially characterized by an

1 Luca Bianchi, “L’acculturazione filosofica dell’Occidente”, in La Filosofia nelle Università. Secoli XIII-XIV, ed. Luca Bianchi (Firenze: La Nuova Italia, 1997), 1-23 2 Richard Lemay, “Dans l’Espagne du XIII siècle.

Les traductions de l’arabe au latin”, Annales 18 (1963), 639-665 3 Lorenzo Minio-Paluello, “Aristotele dal mondo arabo al mondo latino” in L’Occidente e l’Islam nell’Alto Medioevo, I-II, (Spoleto: Centro Italiano di Studi sull’Alto Medioevo, 1965), 606 4 Sylvain Gouguenheim, Aristote au Mont Saint Michel. Les Racines Greques de l’Europe Chrétienne, Paris: Éditions du seuil, 2008 5 Alain de Libera et al., Les Grecs, les Arabes et nous: Enquête sur l’islamophobie savante, Paris: Fayard 2009 6 For information on the debate see Rémi Brague, “Grec, arabe, européen: À propos d’une polémique récente”, Commentaire, v.

31 - n.124 (2008-2009), 1181–1190 7 Joseph Brams, La riscoperta di Aristotele in Occidente, Milano: Jaca Book 2003

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Interreligious and intercultural dialogue

The Court of the Lions, Alhambra, Granada-Spain

8 Gherard Endress and Remke Kruk (edd.), The ancient tradition in Christian and Islamic hellenism: studies on the transmission of Greek philosophy and science, Symposium greco-arabicum 3, Leiden: Brill, 1991

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interest in the sciences of astrology and magic (Pedro Alfonso and Hugo of Santalla), Gundisalvi’s and Avendauth’s translations, and, above all, Gerardo da Cremona’s work, revealed a growing interest in the writings of the falāsifah and Aristotle’s works. The generation of translators that followed (Michael Scot, Herman the German), through their translations of Averroes’ commentaries, substantially contributed to the development of Latin Aristotelianism8.

It boils down to accurately defining the perspective from which we view Aristotle’s introduction into the West. If we look at the makeup of the corpus which constitutes the Aristoteles Latinus, then translations from Arabic appear to represent but a small contribution, limited to a few texts (De Caelo, Metereologica, Analytica Posteriora, Physica, De generatione et corruptione, De Animalibus), most of which were almost simultaneously translated from Greek. However, if we ponder

the role of Arabic transmission in the development of Latin Aristotelianism, perceived holistically as a system of thought and organized knowledge, that same contribution takes on a much more significant role. If we favor the latter scenario, we might then venture the notion of Aristoteles Hispanus, taking into consideration the totality of the works, commentaries and reworkings which make up the Aristotelian corpus and which traveled through the Latin West via translations written in Spain in the twelfth-thirteenth century. The works of Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas clearly show how Aristotelian (and pseudoAristotelian) elements are continually interwoven with the Arabic exegetical tradition.

It would therefore be both difficult and unnatural to endeavor to isolate these two components in a bid to home in on the authentic Aristotle, seeing as the Latins knowingly developed a philosophical system based on multiple traditions.

Insights

Changing places, changing hearts

by Wafa’ Majaés Abdel Nour

A village is a place for sociability, values and traditions; the city is the hub of development and multicultural exchanges and trade. Everything changed with the 1975 war the rise of fanaticism and the arrival of rural migrants to Beirut. The Lebanese novel reflects the transformation of the places and the inner selves of the people.

T

he Lebanese novel came into being at the beginning of the twentieth century, but it was the war that broke out in Lebanon in 1975 which caused novels to enter into a period of maturity. It was in the shadow of the conflict that the novel came to establish its narrative aesthetics and forms, forging its own particular literary identity and characteristics.

The study of place clearly enjoys a dominant presence in Lebanese novels, playing a fundamental role within the narrative structure and occupying the lexicon of words and images. Lebanese literature likewise reveals the extent of convulsion and crisis in the psychological, social and ideological references associated with the literary idea of place. This is because the war affected places just as it affected people. Indeed, not only did the revolution in science and technology break down geographical frontiers, making any one place like all other places, but the advent of war then transformed those places, merging their features and changing their functions. Undoubtedly, the

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fragility of the boundaries between different places in Lebanese novels is confirmation of fact that stability and clearly demarcated identity (two features which often characterise the notion of place) can no longer be applied, and the question that now arises is that of the transformation of places and their nebulous identity.

If we consider cities and villages, it is the former which occupy more space in Lebanese novels, although villages do have their share of attention. The village flourished in the days when agriculture was the main source of its people’s wealth, but then villages began “to be unable to support their inhabitants” (Youssef Habshi Al Ashqar, “al Dhill wa al sada”, p. 232) and even Radwan, who loves the village, has to recognise that it had changed and become a place of confinement. The education its inhabitants began to receive raised a wall between them and the land, and their eyes began to extend beyond the confines of the village (Emily Nasrallah, “al Iqla’ ’aks al zaman”, p. 72).

Often villages have been seen as the place of “sociability” par excellence, because of the simplicity and spontaneity of social relationships, the welcome and honour shown to guests, the intermingling of the private and public spheres, the feasts and festivals. The village privileges open spaces such as balconies, terraces and

public squares (Hassan Daoud, “Binayat matilda”, p. 50); furthermore, it protects and strengthens its inhabitants, and conserves their status. Even more than this, the village protects values and traditions from which principles and standards are derived (Emily Nasrallah, “al Iqla’ ’aks al zaman”, p. 103 and p. 120). For this reason,

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‘‘

As for the city, and Beirut in particular, it has acted as a magnet for internal migration since the phenomenon began, just as it later came to attract the wealth of the Middle East which caused it to shine like a star.

’’

when Alexander begins to feel a sense of alienation when he is in his village he knows that this is a deadly sensation, for how can he endure alienation where he was expecting warmth (Youssef Habshi Al Ashqar, “al Dhill wa al sada”, p. 376)?

The reason for weakening attachment to the village today is to be found in the migration which has taken place in Lebanon towards cities, where education and work are more easily available. This migration became more intense with the outbreak of war in the country, especially from villages in the south, and in Mount Lebanon where many people were forced to leave their homes. A man does not like what he does not know, and the village can only appeal to the person who was born there, because he knows its every path and its alleyways are strewn with his secrets. Only in this way does “he become the village or the village becomes him, the aroma of the village is upon him and his mark is on the village” (Youssef Habshi Al Ashqar, “al Dhill wa al sada”, p. 276).

Thus some villages came to be devoid of people, with almost no one living in them throughout the year except the elderly. And the features of villages changed, some were destroyed while others saw their social fabric dismantled or underwent demographic changes as, in an attempt to ensure greater security, people moved away from outlying areas and gathered together in the centre (Imane Humaydane-Younes, “Ba mithl beit mithl Beirut”, p. 133-134).

As for the city, and Beirut in particular, it has acted as a magnet for internal migration since the phenomenon began, just as it later came to attract the wealth of the Middle East which caused it to shine like a star. Internal migration was not a process of uprooting and self-denial, because the city was just a stone's throw from the village. And yet, little by little, for the people from Mount Lebanon Zaroub al balat in the Achrafieh district of Beirut became “their city” (Youssef Habshi Al Ashqar, “al Dhill wa al sada”, p. 134), and Beirut became the place of longing for everyone who had to leave it, even if only for a time. It also

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became a cultural magnet for the Arabs. “All we young people, from whatever region you care to name, are lost without our star, which was and still is the pole that attracts our hearts”. The cultural compass of the Arabs is in Beirut.

“Whoever is not recognised by Beirut remains in the shadows, they fall by the wayside, they miss their opportunity. ... We came here in order to be someone” (Hoda Barakat, “Hajar al dahik”, p. 107).

Everyone, wherever they may come from, has their own Beirut. The city’s location was chosen as a port for the movement of goods, a multicultural hub providing trade and cultural services to the Arab hinterland, and it has, thanks to its central location at the foot of multi-denominational Mount Lebanon, the outstanding characteristic of cultural interaction.

After the outbreak of the war, refugees and displaced persons poured into Beirut. The militias held sway and the city came to be divided into two, two Beiruts: East and West (Imane Humaydane-Younes, “Ba mithl beit mithl Beirut”, p. 146). The demographic changes were accompanied by rounds of fighting which struck at the city’s historic neighbourhoods. These had emerged and accumulated over the course of history, and one of their most outstanding characteristics was their mix of social classes, but the new transformations also involved a class separation. Over time, and in no small number of neighbourhoods, people who lived in outlying areas came to join their relatives or neighbours who had previously moved to Beirut, one house turned into many houses, newcomers occupied new houses, and apartments became functional and resembled one another to the point of nightmare (Hoda Barakat, “Hajar al dahik”, p. 20).

The city became ruralised as, for example, in the neighbourhood of Salim Masaad near the Basta district where the main street of this lower-class area looks like a village square into which the local men emerge one after the other from their little houses carrying their narghiles to gather under the olive tree (Mohammed Abu Samra, “al Ragul al saabiq”, p. 20). In this way the face of Beirut has changed. Even more significantly, with the outbreak of the war, many people began

Insights

concealing their bond with the soul of the metropolis and, as the historian Kamal Salabi has noted, returned to their customary unrefined and unsophisticated ways.

Lebanese novels, and in particular “Binayat matilda”, “al Ragul al saabiq” and “Hajar al dahik” narrate the impact and outcome of the arrival of rural migrants in Beirut. They remained on the margins of the city, the metropolitan threshold, just as they had remained on the outskirts of their villages. Theirs was a culture of the border which created hybrid neighbourhoods, “neither the abandoned countryside, nor the tradition of the coveted city”, as Ziad Maged has said. In the same context, Ali Zaraket reveals that “we, who grew up on the edges of the metropolis in apprehensive communities, learned not to trust the city. ... And when our land forsook us we turned against Beirut and our revenge exploded in her streets”. This was the position of Youssef in “al Dhill wa al sada” and of the other Youssef in “Hajar al dahik”. Even Khalil, who became involved in the war in the end after discovering the ugliness of the city and the corruption of its parties, did not grieve, for “the city was not his to grieve over” (Hoda Barakat, “Hajar al dahik”, p. 244). These characters resemble the characters of other authors, about whom Rashid Al-Daif has said: “This city in which we pass our lives is not

where we are buried! For we are not the children of the city, but merely its inhabitants”.

Bcharre village, Lebanon

There can be no doubt, as Jabbour Douaihy has noted, that this ambiguity between countryside and city lies at the very foundations of Lebanese novels, which he considers to be “the meeting point between a countryside which is still present and a city which appears on the horizon but is never reached”. The city, which established the novel to know itself, came to be infiltrated by a hint of the countryside and, with the war, itself became a large village.

In conclusion, the war raged through the village just as it raged through the city, shifting them both from one condition to another: the village did not remain a village and the city did not remain a city.

Villages changed in terms of their inhabitants, their houses, their traditions and their values, while in cities people came and went, houses were destroyed and the features, customs and atmosphere changed. Contagion passed in both directions between village and city, as the village became less intimate and the city less metropolitan; places became more entangled and harder to classify. Moreover, the world as a whole likewise resounds with injustice and violence, and its idea of “place” is constantly shaken, so many people today would perhaps suggest that change is not limited to places in Lebanese novels.

‘‘

The city, which established the novel to know itself, came to be infiltrated by a hint of the countryside and, with the war, itself became a large village.

’’

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Insights

Tunisian corners in Catania

by Lilia Zaouali

Souk in Tunisia

A

fter a conference in the Sicilian city of Ragusa in which I was invited to speak of the route of chickpeas across the Mediterranean, I made a stop at Catania, the largest city in eastern Sicily. As I was running late for my flight to Paris, a married couple friends of mine came to pick me up at the Fontanarossa Airport. Enza was gliding nimbly through Catania’s traffic while Pepe pointed out the baroque palazzos, the churches, the Elephant Fountain and the last architectural vestiges of the medieval town, the few monuments that were spared the destruction of earthquakes like the Ursino Castle. However, Enza wanted to specially

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show me the city’s eastern district which, in her view, has strong resemblances with Tunis.

However, the analogies with Tunis that she was pointing out to me mainly stood out in places characterized by decay and chaos, where market stalls overflowing with fruit and vegetables invaded the square, where an Islamic butcher shop displayed halal, the so-called bread Arab, among its cuts of meat, bunches of coriander and mint, spices and Moroccan pottery. As far as I knew, this chaotic scene was not characteristic of the central market in Tunis where bread was never sold in the same shop as meat, and where I seemed to remember a much larger variety of

Insights

products ranging from home-made pasta to special Sfax barley bread for fish soup, to Bizerta mullet bottarga, to dried Kerkennah octopus, to Italian herbs and exotic spices like fresh ginger.

The market in Tunis is wonderful: one part of it, in the springtime, is dedicated to the sale of plants used for the extraction of fragrances like orange flowers which produce zagara called in Sicilian, from the Arabic zahar, meaning flowers, geranium leaves and wild rose petals from which to extract the treasured nisrî, which is good for the heart and also an additive to scent cakes, etc. Last year, I went there to buy white truffle but they only had the black variety that comes from our desert. The white truffle that can be found in the Libyan desert did not arrive this year because of the war, I was told. But Enza was not referring to this market, that was built at the beginning of the twentieth century closely following a specific order in distributing specialties, but to another one that I discovered recently, when I went to visit writer Hélé Béji, after I met her at a conference on the transition to democracy in Tunisia. It is located in the upper medina, along the crowded Marr Street (the way of transit). My writer friend told me that, if I were to lose my way, it was enough to ask any vegetable stall owner for directions to where she lived on Marr Street: “Halloula’s house”. Halloula is the nickname of this good-looking bourgeois lady over-60 who hosts international cultural events and book presentations at her house.

Now back to my visit in Catania. After showing me the food markets, my friends absolutely wanted to invite me to a meal but we couldn’t manage to find a parking place. At the end, Pepe proposed to stay in the car while Enza and I went to “L’Etoile d’Or” for lunch. I had to choose a dish among an infinite number of those exposed in the window, all of which were equally alluring and often with peculiar names: sarde a beccafico, polpette di nunnato, arancini.

Time was flying and I risked missing my flight.

At the end, we decided not to stop to eat there but to take away some food inside my cabinbag, two arancini and four polpette di nunnato.

An arancino is an orange-sized stuffed rice croquette fried in olive oil, more or less the size of a tennis ball, and nunnato fish balls are made with newborn baby fish which is so tiny that it is see-through thin. I was told that there

...

The Arabs in Sicily Sicily, now an autonomous region of Italy, is the largest island of the Mediterranean. For three centuries, it has been ruled by Arabs, firstly by the Sunni Aghlabid and then by the Shiite Fatimids. The Arab conquest of Sicily started in 827, with the battle of Mazara; the Islamic Emirate of Sicily, whose capital was Palermo, lasted until the Normans occupied the island in 1072. During the Arab rule, Sicily blossomed as a cultural, political and economic hub of global importance. The Arab cultural legacy is still profound on several aspects of Sicilian culture, from food to language.

are strictly controlled fishing procedures for this baby fish.

I got to Paris just in time for dinner and happy to be awaited by a friend who accepted to stay for dinner. There wasn’t much to eat in the house but I had my little Sicilian take-out dinner with me. Unfortunately the polpette di nunnato didn’t look at all enticing to the eyes of my French friend. Luckily, however, he greatly appreciated the arancino and drank more than a glassful of rosolio di cannella (cinnamon liqueur) and ate up almost all the Modica cocoa bean candies.

The arancino rice croquettes are a Sicilian specialty that some trace back to the Arab reign although I personally never found anything like them in Arab culinary traditions, either of the Middle Ages or of the present-day. Of course, Arabs used to make rice balls mixed with chickpeas but they were never fried, only cooked in broth.

Since I lived in Palermo, I have adopted the Palermitan name for the two specialties: arancine instead of arancini and nunnata instead of nunnato.

I won’t be so daring as to attempt to interpret the difference in gender attribution in the prevailing usage of Catania, the capital of Eastern Sicily (where even sword fish is called lo spado and attributed the masculine) and Palermo, the capital not only of Western Sicily but of all the island, as well as the capital of Sicily’s Arab community for almost three centuries. It is a city in which, despite existing clichés, the feminine prevails.

Everybody knows that Sicily is a land of mysteries.

...

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Biographies

BIOGRAPHIES Paolo Scaroni is Chief Executive Officer of eni. He has been Chief Executive Officer of eni since June 2005.

He is currently Non-Executive Director of Assicurazioni Generali, Non-Executive Deputy Chairman of London Stock Exchange Group, Non-Executive Director of Veolia Environnement.

Besides he is in the Board of Overseers of Columbia Business School and Fondazione Teatro alla Scala. After graduating in economics at the Università Luigi Bocconi, Milan in 1969, he worked for three years at Chevron, before obtaining an MBA from Columbia University, New York, and continuing his career at McKinsey. In 1973 he joined Saint Gobain, where he held a series of managerial positions in Italy and abroad, until his appointment as head of the Glass Division in Paris in 1984. From 1985 to 1996 he was Deputy Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Techint.

In 1996 he moved to the UK and was Chief Executive Officer of Pilkington until May 2002.

From May 2002 to May 2005 he was Chief Executive Officer and Chief Operating Officer of Enel. From 2005 to July 2006 he was Chairman of Alliance Unichem. In May 2004 he was appointed Cavaliere del Lavoro of the Italian Republic. In November 2007 he was decorated as an Officier of the Légion d’honneur.

Davide Sarsini Novak is the Chief Editor of AGI's Foreign Desk.

Gianluca Sadun Bordoni teaches Philosophy of Law at Teramo University. He has been a member of the Foreign Ministry’s Strategic Forum since November of 2008. Some of his most recent publications include: Diritto e politica. Studi sull’epoca post-globale (Law and Politics.

Analyzing the Post-Global Era), Giappichelli, Turin 2011; Kant-Index, Band 30, Teilband I, (with Hinske N. and Delfosse H.), Frommann-Holzboog, Stuttgart 2010; The Balkans and the Mediterranean, Rubbettino, Soveria Mannelli 2010 (edited by Gianluca Sadun Bordoni).

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Christopher M. Davidson is an academic based at Durham University specializing in the political economy and state formation of the Gulf monarchies. He was previously based at a university in the United Arab Emirates, and also spent some time working in Japan, at Kyoto University. He is the author of four single authored books and is busily finishing off the fifth, which is due out in Spring 2012. His latest edited book, Power and Politics in the Gulf, is an introductory reader for undergraduates, and came out in January with Columbia University Press. His journal articles have covered a number of topics ranging from the history of education in the Gulf to the politics of succession in dynastic monarchies, and he is currently writing a new article on the politics of mercenaries in oil-rich states. His newspaper articles have been similarly diverse, and have been published, inter alia, by the Guardian, the Daily Telegraph, the New Statesman, and Foreign Policy. From time to time he serves as an expert witness in human rights cases, and was a witness in Britain’s longest running extradition case.

Giulio Sapelli is full professor of Economic History at the University of Milan. He has taught at some of the world’s most prestigious universities. He has also served as board member at several major Italian companies and worked as a managerial, formative and research consultant. In 1994 he was awarded the title of researcher emeritus by eni’s Enrico Mattei Foundation. He has been a member of the World Oil Council since 2002 and of the OECD International Board for non-profit organizations since 2003. He is currently focusing his work on the changes the Theory of the State has undergone in the realm of economics, politics and geostrategy. Many of his works have been published and translated into English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, German, Russian and Japanese.

Biographies

Rassmea Salah was born in Casorate Primo (in the province of Pavia, Italy) in 1983. She spent her childhood going back and forth between Milan, Cairo and Mecca, then decided to settle down in Milan with her family. Daughter to an Italian-Egyptian couple, Rassmea belongs to that so-called second generation category, what we could call “new Italians”. She describes herself as “a tree whose roots are sunk in the southern Mediterranean, but whose branches stretch not only toward Europe, but also to the world at large”. To put it simply, she is glocal: a citizen of the world, but also Milanese inside. She has a degree in Linguistic and Cultural Mediation and another in Arab-Islamic Studies. Her travels have mostly been dedicated to discovering the Middle East: Morocco, Tunisia, Palestine, Jordan, Yemen... and she can’t seem to get enough of it! Her interests range from Arabic language and literature to multiculturalism, interreligious dialogue, integration, second generation networks, journalism, poetry and novels.

Angelo Iacovella was born in Rome in 1968. He is an Arabic language and literature professor at Rome’s LUSPIO University. Though formally trained in Medieval studies, he has now turned his focus to the history of Arabic-Islamic mystical literature.

He has taught at Naples’ L’Orientale University, and at other universities in Calabria, in Rome (La Sapienza) and in the Tuscia region. He has written papers and monographs on Islamic civilization and published, among other titles, L’epistola dei settanta veli (The Epistle of the Seventy Veils) by Muhyî al-Dîn Ibn ‘Arabî, Il pettine e la brocca. Detti arabi di Gesù (The Comb and the Pitcher. Jesus’s Arab Proverbs) and Il concerto mistico e l’estasi (The Mystical Concert and Ecstasy) by Abû Hâmid al-Ghazâlî. Furthermore, he edited the collection volume, Il fondamentalismo islamico (Islamic Fundamentalism) with Alberto Ventura.

Imam Yahya Pallavicini works in Rome and Milan, where he lives. He is Vice-President and Imam of CO.RE.IS (Comunità Religiosa Islamica) Italiana, adviser to the Ministry of the Interior in the Council for Italian Islam, President of ISESCO (Islamic Organization for Education, Science and

Culture) Council for Education and Culture in the West, Global Expert of UNAOC (United Nations Alliance of Civilizations), Counsellor for relations with the Vatican and Italy, Catholic-Muslim Forum.

He is one of the 138 international Muslim scholars and intellectuals who signed the document ‘A Common Word between Us and You’, Member of ECRL, European Council of Religious Leaders, founding member of the International Committee of Imams, Rabbis and Christians for Peace presented at UNESCO in Paris, founding member of CEDAR (European Muslim Professionals Network).

Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran was born in Bordeaux in 1943. He went to Michel Montaigne high school in his birth town, choosing the classical studies route. After spending two years at a major diocesan seminary, he was sent to Rome as a student of the French Pontifical Seminary.

He was ordained to the priesthood on September 20, 1969, and in 1973 was called to Rome, where he attended the Pontifical Ecclesiastical Academy and the Pontifical Gregorian University, where he earned his degree in Canon Law. He entered the Vatican’s diplomatic service in March of 1975, and was appointed secretary of the Apostolic Nunciatures in the Dominican Republic, a post he held until 1979, when he took on the corresponding post in Lebanon. He stayed in Beirut until July of 1983, when he became an official of the Council for the Public Affairs of the Church, where he mainly dealt with international organizations.

In 1988 he was appointed “undersecretary of the second section of the Holy See’s Secretariat of State”, the body tasked with relations with states. Two years later, on December 1st, 1990, he was ordained Titular Archbishop of Thelepte and appointed head of the second section, which inherited the role of the Council for the Public Affairs of the Church, thus gaining the status, in the eyes of the media, of a fully fledged foreign ministry. He was Secretary for Relations with States for 13 years until 2003, when he was created Cardinal-Deacon and appointed Archivist and Librarian of the Holy Roman Church by Pope John Paul II. On July 25,

Papers of Dialogue | 43

Biographies

2007, he was appointed as President of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue by Pope Benedict XVI. The Cardinal is currently also active in several other Vatican departments.

Indeed, he is a member of the Council of the Second Section of the Secretariat of State, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith for the Oriental Churches and for Bishops, the Pontifical Commission for Vatican City State, the Apostolic Signatura supreme court, and the Administration of the Patrimony of the Apostolic See. Daniele Nahum was born in Milan in 1983. In 2004 he was one of the heads of the youth department at the Jewish Community of Milan. In 2007 he was elected President of the Union of Young Jews of Italy (UGEI). Under his leadership, the association stood out for its dedicated commitment to political, social and civic causes, especially in the realm of human rights and the integration of minorities living in Italy. He has been Vice President of the Jewish Community of Milan and in charge of its citizen liaison department since June 2, 2010. He has been Vice President of the “Dialoghi Asolani” association since January 1, 2011. The latter strives to involve the active sector of society in socially and politically-oriented projects. On June 2-5 of 2011 he organized, in his capacity as creator and director, “Dialogando” (Dialoguing), Italy’s first integration festival. On July 5, 2011, he became a member of the Second Generations Bureau at the Social Policy department of Milan’s town council.

Francesca Forte has a PhD in Philosophy. She is currently a research fellow at the University of Milan’s Philosophy Department. She also taught a course in Arab Culture at the aforementioned university as part of the degree in Cultural and Linguistic Mediation, and an Islamic Thought course at Trento University. Her research focuses on a range of topics, from Medieval thought (especially Averroes, see La poesia come politica di verità. Una lettura del commento di Averroè alla

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Poetica di Aristotele [Poetry as Politics of Truth.

An Analysis of Averroes’ Commentary on Aristotle’s Poetics], “Studi Maghrebini” 2011, pp.

163-199) to contemporary issues. She has dedicated particular attention to the relationship between Islam and human rights (Decostruire il mondo arabo, verso una prospettiva transculturale sui diritti umani [Deconstructing the Arab World: Toward a Transcultural Perspective on Human Rights], “Jura Gentium”, VII (2011), 1).

Wafa’ Majaés Abdel Nour is a member of the Arabic Language and Literature Faculty at the Lebanese American University (LAU) in Beirut, Lebanon. She holds a PhD in Arabic Literature from Saint-Joseph University (USJ) in Beirut. Dr. Abdel Nour has been teaching in LAU for more than 18 years. She is also currently engaged in the Summer Institute for Intensive Arabic Language and Culture (SINARC) program at LAU where she teaches Arabic to non-speaking Arabic students. She has also taught at both USJ and College Protestant Français. Dr. Abdel Nour has published articles about Lebanese schools’ curriculum and Lebanese novels in renowned magazines and journals. She is the co-author of Arabic language books. In addition, she continues to serve on various selection and evaluation committees in her field.

Lilia Zaouali is a scholar in sixteenth century Mediterranean history. She was awarded a Ph.D. at Sorbonne University, and has taught in the Ethnology, Anthropology and Religious Studies department at Jussieu University in Paris. She also collaborated with a number of Italian universities. She is the author of Medieval Cuisine of the Islamic World, University of California Press (La grande cuisine arabe du Moyen Age, Officina Libraria) as well as of several short stories published in collection publications such as “La pupa di zucchero” (The sugar girl) in Il sogno e l’approdo. Racconti di stranieri in Sicilia (The Dream and the Landing: Tales of Foreigners in Sicily), Sellerio.