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POLITICS: Britain, Germany Push For Dialogue With Islamic World

Peter Deselaers

BERLIN, Apr 15 2005 (IPS) - British and German experts met earlier this week to seek new ways of engaging with the Islamic world to enhance mutual understanding and reduce stereotypes.

Governments of the two countries invited academics and experts to a workshop in Berlin April 13-14 to explore new steps in that direction. The University of Leicester in Britain co-organised the conference.

”It is high time to get engaged much more actively and in very specific joint projects in the social and cultural field as well as in the media sector. This seems to me necessary to regain credibility and trust in the Muslim world,” Gunter Mulack from the German foreign ministry and head of a special task force for dialogue with the Islamic world said in a press release from the University of Leicester.

The German foreign ministry set up the task force in 2002. It was the first such in Europe. The unit manages a network of liaison officers in embassies who report on public opinion in their countries and maintain contact with civil society organisations. The initiative is considered also a step to prevent terrorism in the long run.

The foreign office in London has now created a similar unit.

”We want to share our experience with our European partners, who are very interested in the work of our task force,” a foreign ministry official in Berlin said at the conference.

Prof. Richard Bonney from the University of Leicester said ways of engagement must be found to support critical thought. Some such measures could be cooperation between educational institutions, the twinning of regions and cities, or award schemes for dialogue projects, he told the conference.

”The image of Europeans in the Islamic world is not as good as they like to see it themselves,” Johannes Reissner from the Berlin-based think tank Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik told IPS.

Reissner, who did not participate in the conference, said that Islam may be just one aspect among several in the differences between the two worlds. It had to be assessed carefully and was not necessarily the causal aspect, he said.

The Muslim population around the world is believed to be about 1.5 billion. Outside the Arab countries there is a huge Muslim population in south and south-east Asia, and in Africa. More than 200 million Muslims live in Indonesia, which has the highest number of Muslims in a single country.

Reissner pointed out some of the difficulties in a dialogue with such a diverse Muslim world. There is no organised clergy in Islam as there is in the Catholic church, he said. ”There is no one Muslim who can talk for all Muslims.”

Experts differed over the question who to talk to. Some argued the need to talk only to groups that shun violence. But Abdel Bari Atwan, editor of the London-based Arabic newspaper Al-Quds Al Arabi said that Europe could not demand non-violence ”if you (Europe and the United States) use the highest scale of violence against the Arab world."

Bonney later told IPS that he did not consider governments in the Islamic world good partners. ”Often the problem in a country is an autocratic regime where anybody with an independent mind is actually put behind bars,” he said.

”We know terrorism breeds where we have oppression, where the people in the street have no voice,” Pakistani academic Dushka Saiyid told the meeting. ”Democracy and human rights must be supported, but not through the barrel of a gun.”

She said that the European Union should stop supporting ”tyrant regimes”. When elections take place, Europe and the United States should accept the vote. ”Either you accept the concept of democracy or not, and if brings Islam, so be it.”

Non-governmental organisations (NGOs) were seen as an important partner in the dialogue. But they have to be chosen carefully, Aslam Syed, a Pakistani academic working in Honolulu warned. Some NGO leaders do not have a lot of credibility in the Islamic world because they were more keen on trips to Europe than doing something for the people. ”They know where the money is,” said Syed.

Media plays a key role on both sides, Reissner said. ”Newspapers in Europe draw a picture of an Islam that consists of chopping off hands and repression of women; the media in the Islamic world equally paints a caricature of Europe.”

Atwan said European media normally picks the most fundamentalist people to interview. ”You should encourage Muslims to be part of your media," he said.