International Conference on Dialogue of Civilizations

Abstract

The International Conference on Dialogue of Civilizations was held in the heart of London, at the Islamic Centre of England in Maide Vale, October 27-28. A group of eminent scholars from several countries convened to participate and present their points of view on this quite important and popular subject: Dialogue of Civilizations! The conference was hosted by the Institute of Islamic Studies of London (11s) and sponsored by Shahid Beheshti University (Iran), Allame Tabataba’ee University (Iran), the Institute for Political and International Studies (Iran) and the Islamic College for Advanced Studies (United Kingdom). Several participants attended from local colleges and universities in and around London. Journalists from different organizations covered the event for newspaper and television. The two-day program, which included panel sessions, a play and a music section, was video-recorded and documented. Overall, the conference can certainly be regarded as a successful one, although, as in many other fora, there was room for improvement in few of its parts. Implicit in the title of the project is a rather grand albeit a noble ambition: the reconciliation of civilizations that are on a colision course. In pursuing this lofty goal, participants came face-to-face with the difficulty of defining the concept of ‘civilization’ across civilizations. Perhaps it was this difficulty that contributed to the meeting’s success, and helped participants discover how definitional problems can be overcome and how, indeed, understanding between conflicting entities can be achieved. Most papers in the first panel, titled “Globalization,” started with a rather rosy picture for possibilities of a dialogue. The second panel reversed the tone, while presenting several definitions of civilization, it questioned whether ‘modem civilization’ can be called a civilization at all. Some presentations tied the definition of civilization to its primordial religious tradition, thus disqualifying modem civilization as a civilization and characterizing it as anti-civilization. The third panel used Cultural Studies and ...