CAIRO, 29 October — A meeting of Arab officials and intellectuals will be held next month at the Arab League in Cairo to discuss the threat of “a conflict of civilizations” following the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States, Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa said yesterday.
Moussa said he had sent invitations to “several Arab ministers and intellectuals to define a joint Arab position on this question,” ahead of the meeting to be held on Nov. 26 and 27. The aim of the conference is to find common ground and to “face up to the campaigns of defamation, of humiliation and of falsification in the West directed at Arab and Islamic civilizations, and which make a link between terrorism and Islam,” Moussa said.
These campaigns featured in the talks Moussa had with US officials during his visit to New York and Washington last week. During his visit, Moussa said he had restated that he “completely rejects the accusations and insults made about Islamic civilization and Arab culture,” along with the attacks “on the communities of Arab origin in the United States.”
In a related development, Islamic and Christian leaders met in Cairo yesterday to talk to each other and stand up against the threat of a possible clash of civilizations between Islam and the West.
Religious and civil dignitaries opened a two-day Islamic-Christian dialogue to offer religious insight into causes and remedies of terrorism. “The hypothesis of the clash of civilizations must not be allowed to become a self-fulfilling prophecy,” said Tarek Metry, representative of the International Church Council in Geneva.
“Today, the world is burning ... each of us (is here) to pour a little water to put out the fire,” said Hamed ibn Ahmad Al-Refaai, head of the International Islamic Forum for Dialogue. Delegates denounced the Sept. 11 attacks on US citieson Afghanistan.
“Many persons have genuine experiences of repression in the context of the current world order,” said William Vendley, secretary-general of the UN’s World Conference on Religion and Peace.
