A PEACE AND SECURITY STRATEGY IN INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS: THE DIALOGUE BETWEEN THE WEST AND ISLAM

In the context of building a new foundation for the armonious continuation of the established world order, religi ons/cultures/civilizations are now being summoned to the cause of creating pea ce and security. The dialogue projects which are carried out to serve th is goal work to resolve the lack of mutual knowledge among the communities desc ribed as “the West and Islam”, to discover the common values, and thus o establish some kind of universal understanding. In this article, no dis tinction is made between the efforts variously described as “interreligious dial ogue”, “intercultural dialogue”, or “the alliance of civilizations”. Inst ead, all these endeavors will be commonly referred to as the “Dialogue between th West and Islam”. This is because, in practice, these efforts are all prem ised upon the idea that Islam constitutes a threat to the universal values which the West represents. This paper argues that dialogue alone will be insufficie nt to preserve peace and security in a world in which some two billion eight undred people are living on less than two dollars per day , and a further one billion two hundred million are struggling to stay alive with less than o e dollar. One banner that the anti-globalist demonstrators unfurled in Geneva provides a succinct summary of this case: “If there is no justice, ther e will be no peace.”