04/09/2002

Tueni denies clash of civilizations
Ecumenical conference provides forum for religion and conflict

What happened on Sept. 11, 2001 was not a clash between two civilizations, nor has it produced one, An-Nahar publisher Ghassan Tueni told participants at an ecumenical conference on religion and conflict in Palermo, Sicily, on Monday.

Tueni told attendees that discourse on the attacks, which the government of the United States has tied to Osama bin Laden and his Al-Qaeda network, has been limited by its focus on "an Islam taken hostage by terrorism, and an America that claims to be the sole defender of a heritage to which Islamic civilization has contributed more centuries than the whole of American history."

Tueni was taking issue with those "eager to forecast a clash of civilizations forced upon humanity by some historical determinism," during his remarks at the conference, entitled Faiths and Cultures within Conflict and Dialogue.

The meeting, which began Sunday, was organized by the Sant'Egidio Community, a Rome-based Catholic lay group, to promote dialogue as the only solution to terrorism, violence and poverty.

Tueni, who accompanied a Lebanese delegation of clerics and laymen, joined more than 300 religious leaders � Catholic, Orthodox, Anglican, Protestant, Muslim and Jewish � and cultural leaders, including politicians, scholars and writers from across the globe at the three-day symposium.

Tueni called the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington "an act of war in its most barbaric form," but he denied that the attendant US-led campaign against international terrorism was a civilizing mission.

"The 'war against terrorism' � even if described as a novel species of 'Crusades' � is no more an act of civilization than was the terrorist attack on the Twin Towers," he said.

According to Tueni, it was unfortunate that George W. Bush employed the word "crusade" in describing the US campaign, because the word has caused "endless debate, in the most confused and confusing manner, on Islam, its philosophy, its history and its culture."

The world is not facing an apocalyptic struggle between competing monotheisms, but rather a more insidious beast, a creeping "culture of death, a universal epidemic endangering societies in every part of the globe, including America," the long-time Lebanese journalist said.

Making more than a few philosophical references, Tueni blamed the world's increasingly violent times on the rapid progress of science unbridled by moral vision.

In defense of his argument, he pointed to how discussions of the threat of terrorism have become a question of access to lethal technologies and not one of political ideologies or international realities.

Despite his somber tone, Tueni held out hope for the search for peace, saying the world and discourse on the world's affairs needed to respect and appreciate diversity and multiplicity.

"A common search for governance respecting fundamental human rights cannot be conducted by violence, but only in the conviviality of peace, justice, and respect of 'otherness.'"

Progress and culture, he added, are not served by "an obsessive search for global clashes of civilizations, but by the interaction of different civilizations coexisting within, and not projected outside, the national as well as the supra-national societies."

He also championed Lebanon as the triumph of this ecumenical spirit despite the "presence of zealots" in Damascus.

Also attending the Sicily meeting were Beirut Maronite Bishop Boulos Matar; a delegation representing the Lebanon-based Armenian Orthodox Catholicos, Agop Pakradounian; and two Muslim delegates, Mohammed Sammak and Abbas Halabi, members of the National Dialogue Committee.