ভূমিকা

Shiavault - a Vault of Shia Islamic Books Islam, Dialogue and Civil Society Dialogue between East and West Text of an address by Muhammad Khatami, President of the Islamic Republic of Iran and President of the Islamic Conference Organization, to the European University Institute, Florence, on 10 March 1999. Attending an academic gathering has always been a pleasant and enjoyable exercise for me.

For in such gatherings, the proceedings most often revolve around three functions: talking, listening and understanding. Understanding results from talking and listening, and the two functions of talking and listening,, combined with looking, constitute the most important physical, psychological and spiritual activity of a human being. What is gained by looking expands one's realm of knowledge and also consolidates the consciousness of one's own presence, the feeling that I exist.

While we talk with others and listen to others, looking takes place from one's home base; from the base labeled 'I', and the world and man belong to the domain of sight, and are subjects of what I can see. But talking and listening combine to make up a bipartite-sometimes multipartite-effort to approach the truth and to reach a mutual understanding. That is why dialogue has nothing to do with the skeptics and is not a property of those who think they are the sole proprietors of Truth.

It rather reveals its beautiful but covered face only to those wayfarers who are bound on their journey of discovery hand in hand with other human beings. The phrase, dialogue among civilizations and cultures, which should be interpreted as conversing with other civilizations and cultures, is based upon such a definition of truth, and this definition is not necessarily at odds with the well-known definitions of truth that one finds in philosophical texts.

Dialogue among civilizations requires listening to and hearing from other civilizations and cultures, and the importance of listening to others is by no means less than talking to others. It may be in fact more important. Talking and listening create a conversation; one side addresses the other side, and speech is exchanged. Under what circumstances is man addressed? In other words, in what kind of a world is he or she' addressed?