25/09/2007 - H.E. the Ambassador’s Speech on the occasion of the 5th Annual Meeting of the World Assembly of Muslim Youth (WAMY)

25/09/2007 - Your Excellencies  Dr. Salih Al Wuhaibi, WAMY General Secretary and Dr. Salih Babaier  Deputy General Secretary, Excellencies, distinguished guests, dear friends, it is a great honor for me to be here today to celebrate this Iftar during the holy period of Ramadan.Progress of countries and nations is still measured through parameters related to economic growth: GDP, inflation rate, etc. even if UN introduced recently a new set of indicators, thus considering education, welfare etc.We have to continue in this direction if we want to face the difficult challenges ahead. Our physical growth cannot continue indefinitely, being our world a limited entity. That is to say we have to re-direct our efforts to include other parameters related to our moral and spiritual values, because any “confidence building” process has its roots on Human Resources. These, today, are not only a priority from the economic point of view but a pre-condition for creating what some scholars call “Human Security” within a context of peace and stability.

Modernization, increasing urbanization, industrial development, new sophisticated technologies (including IT and Bio-tech.) are among the most important components of the global transformation which is taking place today. Education and Human Security constitute the vital basis on which any strong and steady socio-economic and political order must be built.

On the threshold of the third millennium, in an atmosphere of anachronisms and contradictions, dominated and conditioned by scientific discoveries, new ideas seem to take flight and regional barriers are collapsing to give way to a new form of globality. The Information and Communication Revolution is giving way to a new and more frightening revolution, the Bio-Technological Revolution, which is emerging on to the world stage as a new power. In this context, the dominant factors are uncertainty, violence, terror, micro macro criminality, abuse of power and oppression, regional conflicts and new forms of conflictuality. Corruption prevails, together with illegal trafficking and crime, personal guards and militias or paramilitary corps. The indiscriminate exploitation of the environment adds natural disasters and new forms of human catastrophe.

All these realities represent new worrying challenges and demand a positive reshaping of civil and political society.

A closer look reveals that one of the major threats for political and civil society derives without any doubt from new inequalities: the new rich and the new poor, the educated and the ignorant, the powerful and those who – although having riches – have no access to political participation.

In such an atmosphere, negative conceptions and grim fantasies of the past persist, stereotyping through electronic media highly diabolic images of the Other, rather than pursuing truth and the promotion of goodwill. Islam and the west continue to perceive each other as menace to their own ways of life and cultural systems. Hence, the thorny question: is the Islamic threat to the West a myth or a reality? And conversely, is the West a threat to Islam and the Muslim populace? Relationships must be shared on confrontation or cooperation?

Recently, an Arab scholar stated that “the burden of mutual suspicion and misgiving weighs as heavy as it ever did in the past even if the Muslims and the West enter the fifteenth century of their engagement".

It is a stark reality, which does affect our lives. This approach is limiting and misleading.

Against such a pessimistic framework, it becomes obvious that a reciprocal relationship must continue to grow, involving societies in their entireness, amalgamating them, creating new links between civil society and political society, and, through an accurate balance between technological growth and the preservation of ancient traditions, making possible social and economic justice and institutional development. Both form the basis of order, stability, security and progress.

I found the sentence “the world is Dialogue” in a paper discussed during an International debate at the Islamic University in Islamabad in 2001. I believe this sentence is highly appropriate.

Dialogue may assume many different shapes: a lively international symposium, a tough business negotiation, international and regional conferences attended by government officials.

Dialogue is even joint participation in peace keeping activities decided by UN; in this respect I underline and pay tribute to the different initiatives of the Custodian of the two Holy mosques, King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz: Somalia, Darfur, Palestine, Lebanon. When, for instance, our governments decided at the international Conference in Rome to assist the Lebanese government and people such a decision was the outcome of a long process of contacts, meetings, discussions.

Let’s hope that the sessions of dialogue like the one currently going on in New York and the other starting today in Beirut will be fruitful.

A “global village” is a well-known cliché. But this global village is pluralistic in a religious, cultural and economic sense and must remain as such if we want our societies develop and grow through exchanges and mutual respect.

We must multiply the opportunities for a better knowledge of our societies in order to share beneficial experiences of other peoples’ civilization, cultural heritage and legacies.

We have to admit that there is a long record of strained relations between Muslims and the West; on the other hand, this situation must not detract from the fact that there is much in common, and much to be said and achieved. At the dawn of the third millennium, the thread of history takes us back to a new approach.

Italy and the EU are committed to these paths and we count on you to achieve together these common goals upon which rest our common future of peaceful co-existence and progress.

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