The Courier

© Catherine Bendayan

And yet in Fez, a little further south from where these two continents face each other, each year at the same time for the last 13 years, a light shines. The Festival of Fez is a trace of a geographic link between the European Union and Africa, and the meetings that take place here become a bridgehead between North and South built on hope and dignity. So much so that today this festival is recognized as one of the most important events on the international musical and cultural scene.

And so each year, Fez, the most holy of cities, still remains faithful to its history and its roots. Beneath an ancient oak tree in the gardens of the Batha Museum of Fez, artists and men of goodwill, peace and hope from all over the world appeal to the best in all of us.

As long ago as the 9th century, the great Ibn Rushd called on man’s ability to behave in a responsible fashion. In 818 AD, 20,000 political refugees expelled from Cordoba founded the Andalusian quarter. Some years later, 300 Tunisian families (originally from Kairouan) settled in Fez and gave their name to the Karauin quarter.

Long renowned as one of the largest medinas in the Mediterranean world and home to many famous dynasties, Fez continues to fascinate and intrigue. It is, as always, a place of extremes, where order and disorder live side by side, as do luxury and poverty. Most of the dwellings emanate a timeless quality from their walls.

In this city, home to the oldest and most prestigious Islamic University, the festival of Fez celebrates the interior beauty of cultures through art, music and meetings, with an emphasis on the sacred.

By introducing spiritual and cultural elements into the globalisation debate, the spirit of Fez goes to the root of the world’s economic and social ills. In this time of globalisation, in the face of people who feel driven to make the ultimate sacrifice, the Festival of Fez and its meetings are a world-renowned testing ground that cannot be ignored.

Globalisation also means information available to all in real time. Fez will without any doubt leave ‘traces of light’ in this respect.

Man reduced to the mere condition of consumer or man reduced to a hidebound religious identity is by definition incomplete. Today’s notion of the universal is synonymous with the interplay of multiple identities, and in our modern epoch there are no longer any buffer zones: neither deserts nor mountains, the speed of movements of people and information leaves less and less time for reflection.
The Festival of Fez and its many meetings have created a space where difference is primarily brotherly. Thus this event takes up the challenge of making a better world through knowledge and recognition.

From this perspective everything makes sense: escape the anthropological triangle of sacred-truth-violence, or a school that propagates institutionalised ignorance (see prof. Mohammed Arkoun, emeritus professor of the history of Islamic thought, President of the CCEFR) yet still another past that couldn’t exist without a better future.

It’s not a question of settling for a litany of good intentions to quickly ease the conscience, but rather of contributing to a teaching in which ignorance will no longer be allowed or supported. One in which the sacred, in whatever form it takes, will be given sanctuary, and in which on the pretext of being the holder of absolute truth, nobody will use violence, even if it is structurally and economically organised or founded on absolute despair.

“The modus operandi is to understand differences and act from similarities” (Andrius Masando, African National Congress).