Sarajevo: Qatar participated in the international conference titled, “Beyond East and West: Eurasian Encounters Reimagined,” which was held in Sarajevo.
Qatar’s delegation was headed by Undersecretary of the Ministry of Education and Higher Education Dr. Ibrahim bin Saleh Al Nuaimi, who is also the Chairman of the Board of the Doha International Centre for Interfaith Dialogue (DICID).
The conference was organised by the Qatar National Commission for Education, Culture and Science and the Islam and Muslims Initiative in cooperation with the University of Sarajevo, Hamad Bin Khalifa University, the Centre for Advanced Studies in Sarajevo, and QatarDebate.
Over the course of two days, the conference addressed issues related to education, knowledge production, civilisational studies, interfaith dialogue, and cultural pluralism, treating them as interconnected fields that contribute to greater mutual understanding and stronger social peace.
During the conference’s second academic session, titled, “Islam and Europe: Historical Encounters, Identity, and Contemporary Reconfigurations,” Dr. Al Nuaimi focused on several key intellectual themes. He emphasised the need to reinterpret the historical relationship between Islam and Europe as one of sustained intellectual and civilisational interaction rather than separation or conflict, noting that many of the conceptual binaries that have shaped this relationship emerged from historical and colonial contexts rather than accurately reflecting historical reality.
He also discussed Islam’s civilisational contribution to the production and transmission of knowledge across civilisations and stressed the importance of reexamining the intellectual frameworks that shaped perceptions of the East and the West. He highlighted the emergence of the concept of Occidentalism in contemporary Islamic thought as a parallel critical approach to the study of the West.
Dr. Al Nuaimi further addressed contemporary developments affecting Muslims in Europe, particularly the evolution of a distinct European Muslim identity and Europe’s growing role as a centre for knowledge production and Islamic legal reasoning.
In a separate address delivered as part of the conference’s official programme, Dr. Al Nuaimi praised the organizers and the conference’s academic standards. He said academic gatherings of this kind help build bridges between researchers, provide opportunities to rethink shared history, and promote scientific and cultural cooperation among different peoples and civilisations.
He noted that the conference discussions demonstrated that the concepts of the East and the West extend beyond geography to encompass historical, intellectual, and human dimensions, and that such academic exchanges contribute to a deeper understanding of shared human experiences.
