Thoughts on the hard road of cultural tourism
Many events happened in the last few months. Some of them have a personal dimension as well as a public one.
First, we recently lost the most prominent Arab novelist, the Noble Prize winner, Najib Mahfouz. For me he was one of the great writers of last century. Mahfouz was totally dedicated to his craft and achieved for literature what the builders of the Pyramids achieved for Egypt.
It is remarkable that this man left his country only once or twice in his life and did not even travel to collect his award. He was faithful to his local environment to the extent that you may be able to use his books as a guide to Cairo. He also had a remarkable knowledge of generations of the Egyptian middle class since the twenties. Different aspects of his novels were studied but the aspect that I am interested in is his attitude to religion. There is only one full study of this topic but it lacks depth and is out of date. However, I can’t analyse this fully in my note.
Secondly, Kufa Gallery which served Arab culture in London for 20 years closed its doors for good. The gallery was a meeting place for intellectuals, a hall for exhibiting art work and had a weekly lecture on topics ranging from religion to music. The credit goes to its founder and sponsor, the great architect, Dr. Mohammad Saleh Makyia. It was a unique experience to have participated in Al-Kufa’s activities and it will be a hard act to follow. We will miss it dearly. I wish Dr. Makyia happy and productive years as he enters his nineties.
Thirdly, there appears to be a constant attack on Muslim communities in the west fuelled by terrorist activities in several European countries which were attributed to Muslim extremists. Some mass media are trying to put all Muslims and Arabs in one basket with the terrorists. This is a wrong assumption. Muslims in the west belong to their host societies as well as their countries of origin. They must do more to understand their new societies and integrate but the host societies must also show tolerance and be careful with their judgment so as not to attribute to the majority what is obviously the work of a very small minority. We call for inter-cultural and inter-faith dialogue in Europe to maintain peace and better understanding of one another.
Finally, to a more positive comment. We are pleased that the magazine’s new design gained the approval of our readers. We received several messages from readers who appreciated the new look of the magazine. We are grateful for their letters of support and we assure them that we are continuously working on improving the content and design of our magazine and its website (www.islamictourism.com).
Dr. Abdul-Rahim Hassan Editor-in-Chief
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