Challenges and solutions to the inter-religious coexistence in the Euro-Mediterranean region

President Topi addressing the work-shop on “Challenges and Solutions for Inter-religious Coexistence in the Euro-Mediterranean Region”

The address of President Bamir Topi

Distinguished Mr. Meta, Deputy Prime Minister,
Distinguished Mr. Rama,
Distinguished high representatives of the Albanian religious communities,
Excellencies Ambassadors,
Distinguished Mr. Claret,
Distinguished and dear friend Besnik Mustafaj,
Ladies and Gentlemen,

No doubt that this very special meeting enabled all of us to be here today. I would like to state that during the recent years the topics of inter-religious dialogue have become a confronting and debating object involving the increasing presence of the public forums and opinion. Today’s conference is a follow up and a welcomed contribution in favor of the dialogue as the only, most democratic and more successful mean for such approaches. Seizing this opportunity I would like to thank the organizers for the invitation, to greet friends and guests and to assure you about my support while wishing you good luck!

Mediterranean is the cradle of our civilization and we can dare to say of the civilizations, - it is the cradle of the three great monotheist religions: Judaism, Christianity and Islam, of this huge spiritual and cultural asset of the world. Under such circumstances perhaps different speakers might use the same references. This demonstrate the majesty of the people who have studied in this world, but who without wanting to repeat one another words, refer with loyalty to the same statements. A known historian has said: “Mediterranean is not only one thing, but a thousand things together. It is not a landscape, but innumerable ones, it is not a sea, but one after the other, it is not only a civilization, but many civilizations placed one a top the other or alongside one another.” Hence the Mediterranean is not simply a physical and geographical ecosystem, but it contains a whole history and all we can do to illustrate this is to point out a few square kilometers at the center of Jerusalem in order to realize all this.

Throughout the centuries the Mediterranean has been a place of coexistence, a meeting and exchange point, but also a battle field, of clashes and violence among those that viewed as threatening the different of the other. But even during times of huge clashes, the civilization has dwelled upon and has pondered to find a solution, to build a peaceful coexistence inside the components of their fermenting societies and also with the neighbors of a different religion. There are many examples that can be drawn from middle Ages. In Europe, Saint Thomas of Aquinas preached a rational theology that enabled the Christianity to coexist with the laical culture and the Muslim world as well. The rationalism of Averroes had its own followers and appears time after time through various challenges. Today not only the illuminated individuals dominate, but also the societies and states that are interested to replace the antagonism with cooperation and acceptance of one another. Of course this is a process that due to various reasons will have supporters and opponents who face one another through the political articulation.

The historical dialectic in the Mediterranean has left its marks. It has created unchangeable realities, whose breathing room is wide. Today is facing traditionalist tendencies and new phenomena sometimes opposing ones, which has focused the attention on the problems of the inter-religious dialogue as a necessity whose success is viewed as a solution. On one hand there is globalism and on the other hand the fundamentalism of various natures, the enlargement of Europe and the tendency to preserve local characteristics, the initiatives of inter-religious communication or the halting terrorist acts. These face offs have awaken great reflections by becoming part of daily life. Everyone rises the question about what are the real relations among the Mediterranean peoples today, what lies in their core and what are the achieved results and what are those things that we can do in the future?
More concretely, how much do the Balkan’ shores of the Mediterranean know the cultures, the ways of life, history, religion of the Southern of Northern shores of the Mediterranean and vice-versa? There is not only one question, but I am convinced that we can discuss calmly and with reciprocal respect and with a strong recognizing and integrating wish, as the spirit of religion and this work-shop underlines. The Mediterranean is a common unit where many cultures exist and these cultures have inter-acted throughout the centuries: the Arab Spain, the Arab Sicily, the Venetian and Genoa Aegean, the French pro-consul Africa, Albania under the Venetian and Ottoman influences, etc. We have too many common things and from the past we can preserve the most positive meetings, we can restore not only the temples and aqueducts, the mosaics and old roads, but also the friendship which has always existed among the good willed people.

From the experience of my country I am convinced that the Mediterranean citizens must enter the public stage of their countries first of all as citizens by considering as entirely individual the issue of religious pertinence, hence with their democratic identity and not their religious one.

This means also the acceptance of religious pluralism, the defense of the individual and religious rights and freedoms, the dialogue among different identities of the Mediterranean, the dialogue among religious institutions and the state where none of the sides cannot interfere into the space of the other by always preserving the cooperation between the state and religion while upholding and respecting the Constitutions.

Dear friends!

Many of the past prejudices are falling. The war conducted by NATO to liberate Kosova is the clearest proof of a new mentality, where religious pertinence was not at all a halting factor for the Alliance. The Balkan experience even in modern times, speaks about the other side as well – about those cases when the religious pertinence has been misused. Those cases when religion has been used as an ideological instrument in order to build ethnically cleansed states, or in a manipulative way as opposed to the civilization aiming to create and establish the superior-inferior relations among the nations, the consequences have been terrible by causing war and ethnic cleansing of tragic consequences as dark spots in our common history.

It is very meaningful the holding of this work-shop in Albania. We are all proud about the excellent harmony that exists among the religious communities in our country where in a short period of time there have been a few meetings held which clearly evidence this spirit. The founding and functioning of the Inter-religious Council with the participation of the most distinguished leaders of the Albanian religious communities demonstrate this very eloquently. They have been the same yesterday, today and they will be the same tomorrow. The three dominating religions in Albania serve as three walls of the same spiritual building where all are legal and equal the same way, where the freedom of belief, the belief of the other, laicism, agnosticism are sacred, unthreatened and protected above all from the spirit of the Albanians and warranted by the country’s Constitution.

It is my pleasure to suggest the Albanian model as a value to be taken into consideration, as an answer to many questions raised by me in my address. Let us turn our eyes to Albania, all those who the weight of the past make them being refractoriness towards inter-religious harmony, dialogue and cooperation and those countries as well, where the migratory movements have created different realities and presences from those of our country. The rule of the Albanian religious areal is a chance and solution at the same time for the religious co-existence. The history has placed us alongside or in front of one another, thus we are “eternally condemned” to stay like this and I am convinced that we all aspire for a better life in peace and harmony. That is why we must unconditionally support the workers of dialogue, the citizens of progress.

Thank you!