seminar on “The concept of tolerance and acceptance of the other”

On Tuesday 30/4/2019 the UNESCO Chair for Dialogue at the University of Kufa held a seminar entitled “The concept of tolerance and acceptance of the other” in the Department of Philosophy at the Faculty of Arts, the University of Kufa. The seminar was managed by Dr. Alaa Shatnan, associate Chairholder and a professor at the Faculty of Languages. It targeted a group of graduate students from Philosophy Department, Faculty of Arts. Many professors participated in the seminar, among them were Dr. Amer Abd-Zaid Al Waeli, Dr. Hamza Jaber Sultan, and Dr. Jawad Kazem Samari.

Dr. Alaa Shatnan inaugurated the seminar with a brief introduction about the UNESCO Chair, explaining the reasons for establishing it at the University of Kufa and its role in promoting dialogue, tolerance and peace-making in Iraq. Dr. Amer Zaid Al-Waeli began his lecture on the mechanisms of peacemaking and creating the culture of tolerance. He emphasized that Iraqi society is not suffering from ethnic or sectarian conflicts at the social level, but it suffers from political conflicts over power that employ societal differences in order to justify its claims to administer the country on a regional, tribal, sectarian, and regional basis. At the end of his lecture, Dr. Amer Al-Waeli addressed the solutions he sees as important for establishing tolerance and maintaining community peace.

Dr. Hamza Jaber Sultan addressed the issue of “the universality of social conflicts”. He discussed the ways on how deal with social divisions and fragmentation and stressed the role of the academic, media and civil institutions in carrying out their duty to raise awareness and stand up against the schemes of civil strife, whether internal or external. In his speech, Dr. Jawad Samari said that the political class did not benefit from the sectarian crisis that the country experienced. He mentioned that most countries that have experienced such crises have used intellectuals and specialists to review the negative phase and deal with what happened. After that, Dr. Raed Abyss raised questions on how to invest the values of social tolerance in building the state and how to diagnose social violence in the production of political violence. Dr. Alaa concluded the seminar with his speech on the European experience in establishing the concept of tolerance and acceptance of the other and the role of the European Humanity Movement and its leaders Jean-Luc and Montesquieu, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Voltaire and others in the establishment of human rights and acceptance of the other.

 

This post is also available in: العربية (Arabic)

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