Question of the Week: How can Europe promote dialogue and prevent a clash of civilisations?

Date: 21/04/05

Traugott Schöfthaler is the executive director of the Anna Lindh Euro-Mediterranean Foundation for the Dialogue between Cultures, which was opened this week. We asked him: How can Europe promote dialogue and prevent a clash of civilisations?

Schöfthaler: The clash of civilisations has been well prepared by nineteenth century national literature and by the still existing tendency to misunderstand, or to limit the dialogue between cultures.

[We have to]... invite individuals, invite intellectuals, but also young people to express their cultural preferences, to develop further their cultural orientation in contact, in concert, in co-operation. They need instruments for an active dialogue, they need the intellectual skill of looking things from more than one perspective.

Stereotypes including the extreme forms of racism and xenophobia are certainly at the heart of the problem. Most of the Arab young think that all Europeans have lost ethical standards and morals and this is exemplified time and again by these policies of Western countries which apply double standards on the region where high moral standards are in vigour: the Muslim world.

But then you can start presenting some differences in Europe. I myself come from a very strict religious family and in discussion with Muslim fundamentalists here I will explain that my background is very religious and it might be even more fundamentalist than yours, so what is this preconception of Europe against the highly ethical Arab world?

We have to be more creative, we want to invite people to develop some interest in each other, some confidence, some trust.

Question answered by Traugott Schöfthaler, the executive director of the Anna Lindh Euro-Mediterranean Foundation for the Dialogue between Cultures.

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