Pakistan Study Centre in collaboration with Department of History, Punjab University, on Saturday arranged a lecture by Professor Dr Jamal Malik on 'Multiculturalism and beyond', who is the Chairman of Religious and Islamic Studies at the University of Erfurt, Germany. Professor Malik is an Islamic scholar and an expert on sufism and colonialism.
In his lecture he highlighted the problems being faced by Muslims living in Europe and also focused on rising trend of integrated debate concerning religious pluralism.
He apprised the audience the discourse of integration in Europe particularly, in Germany had evolved by three factors, including dominance of Church resulting in marginalisation of alternate options; the European monopolisation of secular modernity and idea of the unity of Christian Europe in the post-World War II era.
His lecture was focused on the issues facing Muslims living in Europe and integrated debate concerning religious pluralism. He said European, particularly, Germans, discourse on integration had evolved by three factors-dominance of Church resulting in marginalisation of alternate options; the European monopolisation of secular modernity and ideal of the unity of Christian Europe in the post-World War II era.
Furthermore, he said that that more than three million Muslims living in Germany were facing serious discrimination and cultural biases because of these factors. He stressed that Islam was inherently pluralistic but the Western media had projected it as fundamentalist and aggressive.
"These stereo-typed images have been flashed so constantly that this has led to the rise of so called extremism and Islamophobia in Europe and North America," he said. He added Muslims and the West should focus on inter-faith dialogues and mutual understating leading to the alliance of civilisations.
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