This is the text of the speech held by the author at the Doha International Conference, organised in Qatar by Reset Dialogues on Civilizations on February 26th 2008.

I am convinced that politics can do a great deal to improve dialogue and understanding between cultures, in the manner in which they are filtered by the media. Personally, I do not like stereotypes and I wish the media would not dig further into existing rifts so as to make them even deeper. I am also however certain that politics should stay out of state radio and television networks, on one hand demanding transparency, and on the other avoiding all interference in managing communication systems. I intensely dislike governments and ministers who give orders to the media, be this done formally or informally. During the twenty-five years and more that I devoted to Italian politics, there has been no one in RAI who could say they are in some way linked to my name, and I can state with confidence that this is an exception.

As a Minister of the Interior I only formally used power over the media when terrorism was an issue and I reflected at length and debated the limitations posed by the Constitution as far as freedom of speech is concerned. I do not for example believe that there is any violation in closing down blogs or websites that publish instructions for preparing explosives. This because these are part of an organised network capable of reaching out to potential terrorists, providing them with information they need. I do not think these blogs and websites bear messages, but rather that they communicate matters that have nothing to do at all with culture or news. I also understand how during a war, which is very closely followed by the public, there can be perhaps a number of restrictions as far as freedom of information is concerned.

However, in our “daily” wars we must accept the rules of the game, the rules regulating freedom of the press. The media must be reliable and assume responsibility. The point then is the role played by political leaders. They must not give orders to the media, but they can do a great deal to change existing frameworks, relying on the meaning they attribute to their political mission, their culture, the clarity with which they define how they intend to obtain consensus and about what issues. Politicians and the media share two characteristics. First of all a quest for an ever increasingly large audience. For politicians this means approval, for the media it means audience, but the essence is the same; to rally people around themselves. Secondly, both can fall into the temptation to use Carl Schmitt to increase their audience or their political support. All in all this means playing the “fear card”. Is something feared? Is something disliked? Is one dissatisfied? The answers to all these questions should not be blamed on an enemy.

There are two sides to violence. The perpetrator and the victim. Having assumed a position, anyone on the opposite side becomes the enemy. This is the meaning of violence at the root of information. The rush of adrenaline resulting from 9/11. That event was followed by other violent ones, but nothing remotely similar. One might ask oneself whether 9/11 was the peak of a now declining phenomenon or only its beginning. Those events proved to us that we are dealing with a new kind of terrorism with attacks not having one specific objective, as in traditional terrorism, but mass massacres, as made clear by the choice of means with which these attacks are planned. This is without doubt an extraordinarily dangerous phenomenon, but not all that surrounds us can be perceived in the light of terrorism. Of course not all Arabs, not all Muslims can be considered potential terrorists. It would be dreadful if this should happen. And yet the impact of some breaking news results precisely in this. Hence the enemy is no longer Al Qaeda, but the East, the Orient as a whole. There is therefore competitiveness in conquering larger audiences or increased political support, when playing the cards of the enemy, of fear and of hatred.

I believe that Carl Schmitt was right in saying that in politics there has to be an enemy. But does this enemy necessarily have to be the ‘other’, hence a political opponent or someone who is diverse? Could the enemy instead be hatred, intolerance and such issues, so that with such matters at stake the message sent through the media would be very different? One could say that this does not attract attention. This is not true. Political leaders have an undisputed advantage compared to anyone else. If they have something significant to say they obtain attention and visibility. Ordinary people can preach wonderful things without anyone paying any attention, while statements by national, regional and local political leaders become news, and not necessarily bad news.

I can think of a few simple examples. A few months ago a wonderful advertisement was broadcast by Telecom Italia, with images of Gandhi in the lead role. This advertisement allowed one to envisage what the power of his message would have been if only he could have made use of modern technology. Well, Gandhi’s great message consisted in peace and non-violence. Gandhi made the news because he was not violent. A second example is provided by the famous Charlie Chaplin film, The Dictator, in which Chaplin, playing the role of a double of Hitler, makes a grand speech in which instead of inciting war, he speaks of peace and solidarity. Obviously this was only pretence, but it showed how by changing patterns and teaching out to public opinion when necessary, one can have an immense impact.

Moving on to discuss news, I could finally quote the case involving a report by RAI TV devoted to a number of Romany communities after a woman called Giovanna Reggiani was raped and murdered in Rome last November. The impact of that crime had been immense and the predictable effect could have been a sort of anti-Romany hatred in Italian public opinion. And yet, two days after the crime, the programme called Tv7 broadcasted a reportage on the living conditions of many Romany communities living in shanty towns on the banks of the River Tiber, interviewing a poor sick mother holding her child in her arms. This report raised an issue: How could one hate that mother just because she was part of the “enemy”? Great things can be achieved simply by changing and removing existing patterns.

It is true, there are differences, and diversity does exist. One of the main problems we have with the Muslim community in Italy is the manner in which women are treated. Too many men keep their women and their wives segregated, they abuse them, they do not permit them to have a say in the manner in which their children are educated, all things that not only co against the principles of our legal system but also the legitimate expectations of these women. And yet, every time I have addressed this subject, I never attacked Muslims, but preferred to state that my own country was exactly like that forty years ago. I spoke of Italian Family Law before the reforms approved thirty-five years ago. The old laws gave husbands and fathers power very similar to the one exercised nowadays by those men, hence the enemy exists, but it is not Islam, it is backwardness. The enemy is that model of a family, the lack of attention paid to women’s rights, not Muslims. To contribute to a better understanding therefore, we can try and direct our feelings not against someone, but rather in favour of something, in this specific case women’s rights.

On this subject, I would like to quote Beate Winkler, who contributed to the creation of the European Agency for Human Rights. According to Winkler, we must now learn to “manage diversity” with a variety of specific interventions and objectives addressed at reciprocal understanding and at accepting differences. If we accept one another, there is no reason for Italian Catholics to oppose Muslim communities wishing to exercise their constitutional right to build mosques. However, equally there is no reason for Catholic communities in Muslim countries not to enjoy the same rights. The construction of a mosque in Italy or of a church in Qatar makes the news, but it is not necessarily bad news.

I would like to conclude with a thought on the American primaries. I believe that Barack Obama’s success is due precisely to the fact that he has totally changed existing patterns. He does not speak of the axis of evil, but of a different world in which Americans can once again be loved, he speaks of peace and understanding, of empathy. His success means that people do not necessarily only react to fear, to hatred and to nightmares than in the end become reality, but that they can be happy also watching a TV fiction programme in which a Muslim mother and a Christian father, albeit with a few problems, in the end manage to organise their family. People are experiencing the need to be happier, to have a life filled with joy, to prepare themselves and their children for peace.

Giuliano Amato is a Professor of Constitutional Law at Rome’s “La Sapienza” University and at the European Institute in Florence. The Minister of the Interior during the last Prodi government, in 1992–1993 and then again from 2000 to 2001 he was Italy’s Prime Minister. He has also been the Minister of the Treasury. He has been the Vice-President of the Convention for the Drafting of the European Constitution. Finally he is also the President of the Scientific Committee for Reset-Dialogues on Civilizations.