Analyses
Ramin Jahanbegloo, one of Iran’s preeminent intellectual figures, attends the conference ‘Peace, Democracy and Human Rights in Asia’ held under the auspices of former Czech president Vaclav Havel on September 11, 2009, in Prague. Other guests of this conference are Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama, former President of South Africa and Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Frederik Willem de Klerk, Rabiya Kadeer, head of the World Uighur Congress, Robert Menard of France, former Secretary-General of Reporters Without Bord and others philosophers and disidents.AFP PHOTO MICHAL CIZEK (Photo by MICHAL CIZEK / AFP)
  • Massimo Campanini 1 February 2011
    One of the brighter aspects is the popular participation in a largely spontaneous and uncoordinated movement, which cuts across Egyptian society and sees mainly women and young people demonstrating. However there is a lack of an executive body of the revolution, a party in particular that could act as a hegemonic drive and one that is able to interpret the revolt in institutional terms.
  • 13 January 2011
    Bologna, 27-28 January 2011Islam is today the second religion in Europe. Despite the complexity implied by this fact, a widespread dichotomy presents a homogeneous Europe versus a likewise consistent Muslim “Other”. This conference aims at deconstructing such a dichotomy and to scrutinize how gender lies at the heart of the frictions occurring as a result of contemporary transnational challenges. It presents frontline research on how European states govern Muslims´ migration movements and everyday life along with research focused on power relations within the Muslim minorities.      
  • Nicola Missaglia 1 December 2010
    On November 17th 2010, ResetDoc and the Swiss University organisation UFSP Asia and Europe organised a conference on this subject in Zurich, on the theme “Islam in Europe”. Widely reported by the Swiss press, the event was held in the assembly hall at Zurich University, filled with students, professors and ordinary citizens, bearing witness to the fact that the need to address subjects such as pluralism, relations with Islam and European democracies, democratic dialectics between the majority and the minorities, tension between liberal principles and the traditional instruments of democratic deliberation, is a need that a rising number of people consider pressing.
  • Sadik Al-Azm 15 August 2010
    Nasr is the very up to date descendant of the long line of courageous, bold, outspoken and critical Arab intellectuals, dating back to Qassim Amin from the end of the 19th century, who adopted and vehemently defended the most enlightened, progressive and advanced positions of their times on the major issues vexing Arab and Muslim societies to this very moment, such as progress, renewal, development, education, women’s emancipation, secularism, democracy, human rights, heritage, Islam, modernity, science, rationality and so on.
  • 4 August 2010
    In this Europe it makes no sense to close the borders, to play the game of good insiders and bad outsiders, to defend ethnic and cultural purity, to demonise everything alien. We, a group of concerned citizens, invoke the political responsibility of Europe’s opinion-makers and political leaders. We demand the cessation of the politics of fear and engagement in the politics of hope. It is this sense of urgency that prompts this Manifesto – an appeal to all those living in Europe, those concerned for its present and its future, to join us in imagining and implementing an inclusive politics befitting the 21st century. To add your name as a signatory, please email Pep Subirós: pepsubiros at gmail dot com.
  • Nasr Abu Zayd interviewed by Nina zu Fürstenberg 12 July 2010
    From Reset-DoC’s Archive – Within the framework of the in-depth analysis that Reset devotes to the subject of liberal Islam, we wish to present an interview with the Egyptian thinker Abu Zayd, who is one of the most respected and influential Muslim reformists. Abu Zayd explains that, contrary to widespread belief, within the Muslim world there are many reformists and organisations that spread the principles of liberalism, equality, democracy and human rights. Unfortunately, however, the West appears not to acknowledge this and instead of contributing to strengthen these tendencies, it tends to emphasise Islam’s negative aspects and, in particular, its links with terrorism. The problem – continued Abu Zayd – does not lie in Islam or in the Koran, but rather in the stubbornness that characterises extremists in interpreting the Holy Book in a rigid and literal manner, without allowing for any kind of critical debate. Applying hermeneutics to the Koran would instead facilitates its understanding and a more current interpretation, opening the way to a modernisation of the text without corrupting its sacredness. (This interview was published by Reset-DoC in June 2010)
  • Giancarlo Bosetti 6 July 2010
    Nasr Hamid Abu Zaid upheld the belief that the Koran is a book passed down through oral communication and one destined to poetic recitation. He was a believer and, as a Muslim, accusations of apostasy offended him profoundly. Should the conquering of democracy ever be achieved in the entire Muslim world, the history that will be written will have to linger at length on this small man with his frail health.
  • Federica Zoja 16 June 2010
    In a decisive year for the Egyptian political system, seriously tested by a tight electoral calendar and by the uncertainty of presidential succession, there has been a rise in the popularity of a new man, Mohammed El Baradei, now retired from his international appointments (the most prestigious, from 1997 to 2009 as the Director of the United Nations’ International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna) and now in the front line for reforming his country. He appears, however, to worry the opposition more than the majority.
  • Marcella Emiliani talks to Ernesto Pagano 10 June 2010
    President Obama “has not lifted a finger” for the Middle Eastern peace process according to a caustic Marcella Emiliani, expert on the Middle East and associate professor at Bologna University. In spite of the media uproar, the Israeli blitz on the “Freedom Flotilla” has revealed the entirety of the White House’s inability, and that of the whole international community, to restart the peace process. And while Turkey “draws dangerously close to Iran,” the Israeli government, “accustomed to never-ending international isolation,” continues to “move forward on its own path.”
  • 20 May 2010
    Racism, the symbols of Islam, the relationship between Europe and the Muslim community were at the centre of the first day of the third edition of the Istanbul Seminars, the yearly conference organised by Resetdoc at the Bilgi University. Giancarlo Bosetti, Reset’s editor-in-chief, opened the sessions, reminding everyone how fear has become the main instrument of governments in applying pressure on society’s weaker and more easily influenced groups to incite hostile sentiments such as xenophobia and racism. Nilüfer Göle, chair of the Faculty of Sociology at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes in Paris, instead analysed the perverse perspective according to which, for many westerners, minarets symbolically represent missiles and veiled women are an omen of the imposition of Shari’ a in Europe. An article by Marco Cesario.
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