Conference on orientalism promotes balanced dialogue

Doha, Qatar: With the participation of over 300 researchers from 50 countries, the first edition of the International Conference on Orientalism began...

Doha, Qatar: With the participation of over 300 researchers from 50 countries, the first edition of the International Conference on Orientalism began in Doha yesterday.

The two-day event, with the theme ‘Towards Balanced Civilizational Engagement,’ is being organised by the Ministry of Education and Higher Education, QatarDebate, in partnership with the Permanent Committee for Organizing Conferences at MoFA. It brings together leading scholars, researchers, and intellectuals from around the world to explore evolving perspectives and contemporary debates within the field of Orientalist studies.

Addressing the opening ceremony, Minister of Education and Higher Education H E Lolwah bint Rashid Al Khater said: “We meet today to create a safe space for deep, serious intellectual discussions without sensitivities.” She said that the conference seeks to achieve the magical balance created by Tolstoy in his famous epic, “War and Peace,” by striking an intellectual balance between popular sentiment and specialised literary criticism. “Through the conference, we will learn about the relationship between the conference and the novel by Russian author Leo Tolstoy,” said the Minister.

She said this idea came in 2021, when Europe and Muslim-majority countries were swept by a wave of events and protests centred around the insult to Islamic religious symbols, and the subsequent actions and events. 

“This idea was not originally concerned with a conference on Orientalism, but rather began with the idea of launching an open, pivotal space that would bring together East and West, to deconstruct what began as a state of identity and cultural war,” said Al Khater.