Our aim is not only to encourage discussion, but also for different people and different points of view to come together, conditio sine qua non to establish an effective and fruitful cultural exchange. We aim to encourage reciprocal knowledge by comparing different traditions and philosophical languages. And we believe this is possible only if we identify a series of distortions and deformations, obstacles which come between us and the road to knowledge. It is not enough to leave our own testimony, it is not enough to voice or write our own ideas. We need to have contact with and compare ourselves to the other in order to find a converging point between specific ideas and concepts; and assign the following concepts to the abc of the intercultural dialogue: reason, human rights, freedom, democracy, faith, secularism, fundamentalism, colonialism, post-colonialism and so on. The differences are under our noses, and we should not be afraid to face them. Rather, we should develop a lasting dialogue, using this opportunity as a starting point for other opportunities to compare and debate, for which there will be an increasingly greater demand in the future. This is what we intend to do with resetdoc.org. Thanks to the help of modern information technology, which allows us to interact more quickly and more regularly, why not?

On our website www.resetorg.doc, we specifically aim to compile a glossary of the dialogue, which will also be a glossary of all the controversial words which are able to ignite discord, such as “democracy”. On this occasion, I won’t go into a discussion on the meaning of this word. Rather, I will limit myself to speaking briefly about a word which is at the heart of our meeting today, and which Sadik Al-Azm and Abdou Filali-Ansary discuss: “secularism”, if preferred “ laity”. This is a word which we are called on to discuss and tackle in an authentic way, making sure to examine the differences, points of friction, contrast, or convergence. The adjective “secular” is highly controversial and contested. There are those who believe, as according to the parable outlined by Max Weber, that secularisation only exists in Europe. Laity, is therefore a European exception. But this is easily disproved by looking at Arabic countries, where numerous intellectuals have themselves carried out the idea of the organisation of a State – look at Egypt – inspired by secularism. Various intellectuals and politicians define themselves as “laic”. In fact, in Egypt – and not only there – for the past twenty years, they have been trying to redefine the line between religion and laity. Recently, the adjective “secular” has become rather unpopular, and less used. Whoever holds to heart the meaning and values of the road toward secularisation, has decided to replace it with the adjective “civil”. Why? To lower the barrier between religion and politics. This is a linguistic difference which, with the aid of philosophical instruments, is worth going into in more detail.

Notably, there are a series of questions for which philosophy is called on to provide some answers: how can we answer back to the religious world which claims to have a big influence in public life? There is not only the difficulty in defining the concept of secularism. We also ask ourselves how we can deal with the problem of religion interfering in life in our societies. And what effects would a similar religious revival have on life in a tolerant, pluralist, and open society? What difficulties would result from the hypertrophy of the religious phenomenon in various Countries in the world; from immigration in Europe following various diasporas, to traditional European communities, and to the USA? The phenomenon changes from case to case, but liberal pluralism, as intended by John Rawls, among others, still applies.

I hope that, over the course of both current and future debates, it will be possible to refer to other examples of political thought able to offer an explanation of how religious pluralism is organised in life in societies, where religion plays a major role in public life. There are those who highlight the possibility of defining tolerance on anti-liberal foundations. Well, I believe that we should not exclude any alternatives, and that all the suggestions put forward are worth considering. Furthermore, I hope that, as suggested by one of our reporters (Alessandro Ferrara), other versions of tolerance are brought to light, framed by parameters which, in other traditions, would prove to be harmful, which could in fact produce fecund results in terms of coexisting with other cultures. I say this with the same spirit with which Charles Taylor and Dipesh Chakrabarty invite us to “become provincialized”, to go back to worrying about our own world. And with which Amartya Sen invites us to retrace the spirit and cultural dynamism of free and open societies in non-occidental Countries and traditions. I hope that such a debate does not merely become a succession of individual contributions, and that, we can continue to look for those points of convergence and of friction, in order to better our reciprocal understanding.

Giancarlo Bosetti is co-founder and editor-in-chief of Italian bimonthly «Reset». He teaches Journalism at La Sapienza University of Rome. He served for a long time as vice editor-in.chief of Italian newspaper «L’Unità». Among his books: La lezione di questo secolo, book-interview with Karl Popper, Marsilio 1992. Intervista sul pluralismo, with Robert Dahl, Laterza, 2002, and Cattiva maestra. La rabbia di Oriana Fallaci e il suo contagio, Marsilio 2005.

This text is the transcription of the intervention held by the author at the round table organized by Reset Dialogues on Civilizations “The awakening of religion and the open society”, which took place on UNESCO’s World Philosophy Day (Rabat – Morocco, 16th November 2006). The following figures participated at this meeting: the Interior minister Giuliano Amato, the philosophers Abdou Filali-Ansary (Morocco), Fred Dallmayr (U.S.A.), Sadik Al Azm (Syria), Sebastiano Maffettone and Alessandro Ferrara (Italy), the Editor-in-Chief of Reset Giancarlo Bosetti and Reset DoC’s director Nina zu Fürstenberg.

Translation by Sonia Ter Hovanessian