Casablanca Seminars
Tolerance in Mediterranean Societies: History, Ideas, and Institutions

The international association Reset Dialogues on Civilizations have launched in 2018 the Casablanca School, a yearly international program on cultural and religious pluralism and political liberties. The purpose is to promote a local intellectual response to the rise of rigorist strands of Islamic thought by training 30 emerging opinion-leaders on the relationship between religion, history, and power and to contribute to the reawakening of pluralistic traditions in Muslim contexts.

This will be addressed through the critical tools provided by a wide range of social sciences, from political philosophy to sociology, from domestic law to theology, from a variety of socio-cultural perspectives. These include the diverse historical processes characterizing the contemporary world, institutional organization in Europe, North America and Muslim countries, juridical and constitutional law and the related political theories, the differences and shared traits that pluralist positions arise from, the variety of positions in the Islamic cadre as well as the historicity of Jewish, Christian, Muslim, and other religious denominations.

The academic teachings will be complemented by project management tools to facilitate the training’s embedment into the participants’ daily work and will be transferred in tutoring sessions where participants will learn to plan and apply the new concepts and tools.

The impact of the project is potentially very broad and it will come from its unique combination of techniques that will allow for the propagation of its teachings to students and the broader public in the region. After the first year, we plan to expand the program to a larger number of participants.

History

Casablanca School ’18: Sources of Pluralism in Islamic Thought