Education key to averting future ‘cartoon controversies’ – UN official

Education is key to combating the mutual ignorance and fear that are fuelling controversy over caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad and to preventing future clashes of a similar nature, a United Nations official dealing with the cultural gap between Islam and the West has said.

“We have to get to a point that different societies have some degrees of understanding of the concerns and the grievances and even the sensitivities of the other societies in the world,” Shamil Idriss, Deputy Director of the Office of the Alliance of Civilizations, said in an interview with the UN News Service.

“It is an educational issue,” he said, questioning which steps might have prevented the deadly confrontations over the caricatures, originally published in a Danish newspaper, that have occurred in numerous countries. “What could have been done in the three months between the printing and the violence breaking out? What could have been done differently at the political level, at the religious level, at the civil society level, to prevent the violence? What could have been done before the articles have been printed?

The furore was caused by mutual ignorance and mutual fear, he said. As a result, the response must redress these specific problems. “Then the solutions are mutual respect and education, population exchanges and cross-cultural cooperation,” he said.

Last July, Secretary-General Kofi Annan established a High-Level Panel on the Alliance of Civilizations. The group will present its report to the Secretary-General later this year, Mr. Idriss said. This will include a plan of action for bridging the gap between cultures, especially Islam and the West, which threatens peace in the world.

“Right now, we are working on four major issues: the issue of youth engagement, the issue of the impact of the media and how media could have a more constructive impact, the issue of immigrants integration and the issue of educational reform,” he said.

Jointly led by Federico Mayor, the former head of the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and Mehmet Aydin, a minister and professor of theology from Turkey, the High-Level Group held its first meeting in Majorca, Spain last year. It will meet again in approximately two weeks.

Recent violence over the caricatures “will be in the top of our list,” Mr. Idriss said.

Members of the Panel range from such renowned theologians as Desmond Tutu of South Africa, Karen Armstrong of the United Kingdom, Arthur Schneir of the United States and Mr. Aydin, to administrators of cultural institutions, such as Ismali Serageldin of Egypt’s Biblioteca Alexandria.

The call for the alliance was initiated by Spanish Prime Minister José Luis Rodriguez Zapatero and co-sponsored by Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan.