WORLD VIEW: Vienna was an appropriate venue this week to debate the links between the European countries and the countries of the Mediterranean basin. From a negative point of view, Jörg Haider and his xenophobic Freedom Party (FPÖ) remain a focus for the European far-right, which has intensified its vitriol towards Arabs, Muslims, and the Islamic world since September 11th.
From a more positive perspective, Vienna is the location of the European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia, which has been reporting on anti-Islamic reactions in the 15 EU member- states since the attacks nine months ago. Despite the strong response from the EU member-states to the FPÖ's participation in the present Austrian coalition, successive Austrian governments have been playing their part in promoting dialogue between the European and Mediterranean countries.
"Over the past ten years, Austria has actively promoted numerous events and activities in support of . . . dialogue between cultures and civilisations," says the Austrian Foreign Minister, Ms Benita Ferrero-Waldner. "It is precisely this form of dialogue which gives me the hope that, if only we try hard enough, there is a realistic opportunity to overcome the often misleading perceptions we have of one another."
On no less than three major occasions in history, events at Vienna have come close to defining the boundaries between European society and the Islamic world. When a Mongol army reached the gates of Vienna in 1241, the future of western Christendom looked doubtful and was rescued only when the Mongols suddenly withdrew to Mongolia to elect a new Great Khan, and failed to return.
The Turkish siege in 1529 was a much closer-run thing, but historians remain baffled by the unexplained Turkish decision to withdraw when Vienna was defended by a small garrison, and at least 1,500 people had been killed.
When the Turks were finally defeated at the gates of Vienna after a two-month siege in 1683, the furthest limits of Islam in European society appeared to have been permanently defined, and the victorious Habsburgs celebrated their triumph in an outpouring of baroque monuments and architecture over the next hundred years.
In the aftermath of Napoleon's defeat, the basic outline of modern Europe was fixed by the mapmakers who carved up Europe at the Congress of Vienna in 1815.
But since then, the boundaries and limitations of Europe have been threatened by events that took place in Sarajevo, a city that was once an integral part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire: events in Sarajevo in 1914 triggered the first World War, the eventual collapse of the mighty European empires, and the formation of new nation states; and, more recently, Sarajevo has come to symbolise the horror of ethnic cleansing, and the failure to accept that European identity can embrace people with different ethnic, cultural and religious identities. The Euro-Med programme, initiated in Barcelona in 1995, involves 27 countries and embraces such diverse cultural images and labels as Europe, Africa, Middle East, Maghreb, Orient, Arab, Western, Christian, Islam and Judaism. The images and labels are not always exclusive, and they often complement each other and overlap in surprising ways, as we heard at a seminar in the Hofburg Palace in Vienna this week that brought together journalists, writers, academics, and religious leaders from the 27 Euro-Med countries.
Hayat al-Howayek Attie, a Maronite Lebanese journalist and writer now living in Jordan, described herself as "a Christian by religion and a Muslim by culture". Ms Attie reminded us that Arab and Islamic culture once spread from Andalucia in western Europe to Constantinople in the east, and had inspired the Renaissance and the revival of European culture.
But she decried the realities of present cultural dialogue between Europe and the Arab/Islamic world. "Dialogue is not between a voice and an echo, but between two equals," she said. Dialogue begins with the search for knowledge, seeking to know and like, and in the recognition of the right to be different and to hold different values. It involves exchange, reaction, and interaction.
In her work, Ms Attie has translated 22 books - 20 are from European languages into Arabic, but only two are from Arabic into European languages. "Why isn't Arabic literature being translated into European languages?" she asked, and she wondered whether this was symptomatic that even educated, cultured and well-read people in the West had no genuine interest in understanding the Arab and Islamic world.
Daoud Kuttab, the Palestinian writer from Ramallah and director of the Institute of Modern Media at Al-Quds University, said the role of "writers is to be prophets and to speak the unspoken". But he is worried that popular culture and the mass media is being dominated by the Hollywood-style portrayal of Arabs and Muslims as fanatics and terrorists, particularly in the wake of the events of September 11th.
As the former UN Secretary-General, Boutros Boutros-Ghali, pointed out, the reactions of fear and mistrust created after September 11th underline the urgency of permanent cultural dialogue. The Euro-Med countries share a common history, geography and destiny, he said.
The problems of the south Mediterranean are fast becoming the problems of the European Union. There is an inevitable interdependence between our societies, and Vienna was an appropriate venue to wrestle with resistance to the dialogue we need and to rejoice in the opportunities it offers.
Patrick Comerford is an Irish Times journalist and a Church of Ireland priest