QNA
Doha
Minister of Culture HE Sheikh Abdulrahman bin Hamad Al Thani on Thursday opened the fifth edition of the country’s annual Season of Seminars, bringing together researchers, academics, diplomats and cultural figures to discuss contemporary intellectual and political issues.
The programme, held at the Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies in Doha, is being organised by the Ministry of Culture in partnership with the Arab Center, Hamad Bin Khalifa University and Lusail University.
The opening session featured an extended discussion with Arab intellectual Dr Azmi Bishara, director-general of the Arab Center and chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies. The session was moderated by writer and broadcaster Jassim Salman.
Dr Bishara addressed questions surrounding identity and the state in Arab societies, as well as political and intellectual developments in the West and Israel and their implications for the Palestinian issue.
He said Qatar’s investment in culture and knowledge had helped establish major institutions and projects, highlighting the Arab Center as a research platform that attracts scholars from around the world.
He also pointed to projects including the Historical Dictionary of the Arabic Language and the Arabic Encyclopedia (Arabica), describing them as efforts to develop knowledge from within the Arab context rather than relying exclusively on Western intellectual frameworks.
Bishara said his interest in the question of identity developed from the Arab context and led to extensive research that resulted in his book The Question of Identity.
He argued that Arab intellectual production should engage with global scholarship on equal terms and contribute to international debates.
The discussion also examined debates in Western scholarship over the formation of Arab states, including distinctions between states with what Bishara described as a regional core and others whose borders were established during the colonial period.
Bishara also discussed the development of the Arab Center, saying its initial challenge was to establish rigorous research standards comparable to those used internationally.
According to him, only about 30 percent of research submitted to the centre is ultimately published, with the remainder rejected through its review process.
He said the approach had enabled the centre to produce Arabic-language research that could participate in international academic exchange and be translated into other languages.
The centre publishes five academic journals and an annual book, while also organising conferences, including its annual Conference on Social Sciences and Humanities. It is also preparing a biennial conference focused on Arab doctoral students studying at Western universities.
Bishara said the centre waited several years before launching the Historical Dictionary of the Arabic Language, after developing the institutional and academic capacity required for such a large undertaking.
He described the Arabic Encyclopaedia as another long-term project intended to provide comprehensive Arabic-language reference material across different fields of knowledge. The aim, he said, is to give young Arabs access to reliable sources of knowledge written within their own cultural and intellectual context.
HE Sheikh Abdulrahman asked about changing attitudes among young people in both Arab and Western societies, and whether a combination of attachment to national identity, intellectual openness and pragmatism could influence the future of the Palestinian issue.
Referring to Bishara’s discussion of the children and grandchildren of immigrants in the United States, the minister asked whether a similar trend could be emerging among Arab youth, in which a strong sense of national identity coexists with openness to other ideas and societies.
Bishara said the Palestinian issue was closely linked to the way identity is understood, arguing that defining national identity in opposition to a broader Arab identity could, in certain political contexts, lead to Palestine being viewed as an issue belonging to others rather than a shared national or Arab concern.
He also said identity could take different forms, and warned against turning religion from a matter of faith, ethics and belonging into a sectarian identity. Such a transformation, he argued, could make identity a tool for division when it is given an exclusionary or factional meaning.
Discussing Western societies, Bishara distinguished between integration and abandoning one’s original identity.
He said Western countries have adopted different approaches to the cultural and religious identities of immigrant communities.
