By Hamza Hendawi
The Foreign Ministry and the University of Cyprus have had a change of heart over a seminar on Islam to be held later this month in Nicosia, stating their support for the high-powered international gathering.
The October 30-31 seminar is entitled “Political Islam and the West” and is organised by the Nicosia-based World Centre for Dialogue, a non-profit organisation promoting better understanding of global issues.
Former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto will deliver the keynote address at the seminar’s inaugural session. The event will attract leading scholars and experts from the Middle East, Europe and the United States. They include renowned columnist and former French ambassador to Turkey and Tunisia Eric Rouleau, A’zam Taleghani, the only woman candidate in Iran’s presidential election last May, and senior Shiite Muslim scholars from Iran.
Iranian-born businessman Hossein Alikhani, president of the Centre for World Dialogue, told the Cyprus Mail yesterday that he had just received a call from the university’s rector, Miltiades Chaholiades, in which Chaholiades communicated to him that the university had dropped its objections to its name being mentioned in the seminar’s program.
“He told me that there had been a misunderstanding which is now cleared and that members of the university’s academic staff will participate in the seminar,” said Alikhani, explaining that none of the speakers during the two-day gathering would be from the university.
“We never asked for speakers from the university,” he added.
Alikhani, a naturalised Cypriot who has been living on the island since 1980, said that he also learned yesterday that Foreign Minister Yiannakis Cassoulides had given instructions to senior ministry officials to help the seminar’s organisers in any way possible.
“Senior ministry officials will also attend the seminar, but the minister himself will not be able to attend because of his previously agreed engagements,” said Alikhani.
A statement by the organisers last week appealed to the university and the Foreign Ministry to reconsider their positions after a “misunderstanding” led them to distance themselves from the seminar.
It said the misunderstanding had arisen from the “erroneous impression” that the seminar would deal with the Cyprus problem.
“The seminar will in fact analyse the global phenomenon of the West having to come to terms with the growing involvement of Islamic groups, in the Middle East and elsewhere, in politics,” the statement said.
