President Seyyed Mohammad Khatami: We Should Listen to What Other Cultures Offer Iranian President Khatami's speech, as reported by the Iranian News Agency, was presented at a conference s...
https://xcancel.com/1860rm/status/2033183521380995139?s=46
...ponsored by the UN, UNESCO, and the Islamic Republic of #Iran, in September 2001. The General Assembly of the United Nations has only recently endorsed the proposal of the Islamic Republic of Iran for dialogue among civilizations and cultures. Nevertheless, this proposal is attracting, day after day, increased support from numerous academic institutions and political organizations. In order to comprehend the grounds for this encouraging reception, it is imperative to take into account the ...
...prevailing situation in our world today, and to ponder the reasons for widespread discontentment with it. It is, of course, only natural for justice-seeking and altruistic human beings to feel discontented with the status quo. ... Today, in this esteemed gathering, allow me instead to begin with certain historical, theoretical, and, for the most part, non-political grounds for the call to a dialogue among civilizations. ... ... Persian thought and culture owes an immense debt to Islam as o...
...ne of its primary springs of efflorescence. Islam embodies a universal wisdom. Each and every human individual living in each and every corner of time and place is potentially included in the purview of Islam. The Islamic emphasis on the essential humane quality, and its disdain for such elements as birth and blood, had conquered the hearts of those yearning for justice and freedom. ... In order to call governments and peoples of the world to follow the new paradigm of dialogue among cultu...
...res and civilizations, we ought to learn from the world's past experience, especially from the tremendous human catastrophes that took place in the 20th Century. We ought to critically examine the ... glorification of might. From an ethical perspective, the paradigm of dialogue among civilizations requires that we give up the will-to-power; and [without] the will-to-empathy, compassion, and understanding, there would be no hope for the prevalence of order in our world. We ought to gallantl...
...y combat this dearth of compassion and empathy in our world. The ultimate goal of dialogue among civilizations is not dialogue in and of itself, but attaining empathy and compassion. Esteemed participants, there are two ways to realize dialogue among civilizations: 1. The interaction and interpenetration of actual instances of cultures and civilizations with each other, resulting from a variety of factors, presents one model in which this dialogue takes place. ... 2. Alternatively, dialogu...
