LONDON, 24 August 2019—An interactive intellectual and cultural seminar entitled, “Arabs and the Challenge of Modernity,” recently was held in London. Organized by the International League for Peace and Human Rights (ILPHR), the symposium featured thinker and writer Dr. Omar Abdul Aziz. A large number of Arab stakeholders in Britain attended the event.
ILPHR Vice President Dr. Hamdan Dammag opened the gathering, explaining, “The importance of this seminar’s theme comes not only from its clear humanitarian context, but from its particularity regarding our Arab nation and the overall challenges facing the peoples of that region, foremost of which is the imperative to catch up with the train of human progress.
“Despite difficulties, failures, and disappointments, modernity is advancing at a steady pace and an unchanging direction, which will undoubtedly change the features of human life both as we knew it in the past and as we know it today.”
He continued, “Talking about modernity is by necessity a talk about the future, which we must involve ourselves in thinking about, even if we are confined to all the miserable realities of the Arab region.”
The seminar, held at the Arab Cultural Forum in Britain, was moderated by Dr. Mahmood Alazani, chair of Tamadon Foundation, who noted that the positive response and interaction with this event emphasizes the need to pay more attention to intellectual and cultural activities which are nearly absent under the pressure of daily political events, adding that intellectual issues remain at the heart of public concerns.
In his remarks, Abdul Aziz addressed the seminar topic through two axes, the first dealing with general concepts of modernity and the relationship between religion, secularism, and modernity, in addition to the concepts of liberalism, democracy, and the intersection of the global economic system with it.
He pointed out that, “Despite the fact that Europe was historically central to concepts related to modernity, this does not negate the recognition of multiple forms of modernity and its pervasive presence in the contemporary world, which makes modern practices participatory in the human nature.”
Further, he explained that the roots of modernity, which emerged after the Renaissance in Europe, came from the Greeks, as well as the Arab and Islamic civilization in Andalusia.
Abdul Aziz’s first theme also examined the experiences and models of traditional intellectual and political modernity and its historical paths, including the Asian model, in addition to reviewing the Chinese paradigm, which, he noted, is “unique and independent from the prevailing Western modality.”
The speaker’s second axis dealt with the issue of modernity in the Arab world specifically, providing a brief historical overview of Arab experiences, touching on the problems of reining in Arab and Islamic doctrines, as well as discussing the region’s political heritage, its contemporary manifestations, and how it hinders enlightenment efforts in the Arab world.
Abdul Aziz touched on the question of democracy in the Arab world and the consequences of the Arab Spring, pointing to the importance of reforms that some Arab countries are experiencing in the Gulf region and North Africa, which he said comes as “a logical response to the inevitability of change and modernity.”
In conclusion, he expressed his firm belief that “Arab societies have the prerequisites to join global modernity, and that future generations would be able to invoke their own knowledge and skills to enter a new age of modernity that is open, cross-cultural and cross-border.”
The seminar included many important interventions and interactive questions from attendees, which gave it a dynamic character.
Abdul Aziz is an academic, a literary critic, a novelist, painter, economist and political analyst. He is the director of Studies and Publishing at the Department of Culture for the Government of Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates.
