Press Release
Conference on “Who Speaks for Islam? Who Speaks for the West?” to be held in Kuala Lumpur
For Release on 6 February, 2006
Kuala Lumpur and New York
Prime Minister Datuk Seri Abdullah Haji Ahmad Badawi of Malaysia will open the conference and participants will include former President of Iran Mohammad Khatami; Secretary General of the Organization of the Islamic Conference Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu; Secretary General of the League of Arab States Amre Moussa; Grand Mufti of Bosnia-Herzegovina Mustafa Ceric; Oxford historian and author Timothy Garton Ash; Rockefeller Brothers Fund President Stephen Heintz; and Director of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s Center for Global Security Research Ronald Lehman.
In total, the conference will bring together 50 eminent persons - policy-makers, religious leaders, scientists, economists, editors, and other opinion-makers — from seven Western and ten Muslim-majority countries as well as three international organizations, including the United Nations. Participants will strive to convey the diversity within each tradition, dispel misperceptions, and develop a strategy to promote better understanding between Muslims and the West through the media.
Participants will also tackle such important issues as the impact of globalization on the Muslim world and the challenges posed by science and technology to the Muslim-Western relationship. The conference will conclude with a final session devoted to debating the policy question: What is the future framework for the Muslim-Western relationship?
NYU's Dialogues was founded in the aftermath of the tragedy of September 11, 2001 as a forum for constructive debate between various religious, intellectual, economic, and political sectors of American, European, and Islamic societies. Dialogues takes a rational approach to contentious issues between the Islamic world and the West and widens this debate to include the important constituencies of policy and decision-makers, policy analysts, the media, and educational institutions.
IDFR, established in 1991, is an agency under the Malaysian Ministry of Foreign Affairs that provides formal basic and follow-up training to Malaysian Foreign Service officers.
This will be the third major international conference organized by Dialogues and the first in conjunction with IDFR. Dialogues’ previous conferences addressed the "clash of civilizations," and Islam and elections.
The conference has been made possible by the generous support of the governments of Malaysia, the United Kingdom, and France, the MacArthur Foundation, and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund.
Contact: Shaanti Kapila, Dialogues: Islamic World-U.S.-The West, New York University at +1 212-998-3656 or shaanti@islamuswest.org
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