The Our Shared Europe project is the British Council’s response to one of the major cultural challenges facing our continent today – the growing mutual mistrust between Muslim communities and wider European society.
Our Shared Europe seeks to find common ground, and build shared values, perspectives and behaviours that are based on mutual respect and trust. In particular, it is about how to acknowledge the contribution of Islamic communities and cultures – both in the past but also in the present – to the shaping of contemporary European civilisation and society. This means recognising the rich and diverse roots of our culture and society and using this recognition to build a more inclusive view of the continent that we all share.
"The British Council’s Intercultural Dialogue work in general, and Our Shared Europe in particular, are not designed to confront terrorism: that is the work of government agencies. What we do is to address the cultural damage of the past; and the fractured understanding that our society has of others, they of us, and we of ourselves. We certainly believe that these dislocations and fractures are major contributors to extremism; but our interest is in healthy, open communication and mutual knowledge as positive ends in themselves, yielding better informed, better tempered societies that accept, respect and welcome each other and are at ease with themselves. We do not always aspire to seamless agreement. Sometimes reasoned disagreement on shared premises is just as important: a clear and explicit understanding of this (apparent) limitation is a sign of the respect that is a precondition of successful Intercultural Dialogue.”
Read Martin Rose's Zaki Badawi Memorial Lecture 2009: A Shared Past for a Shared Future - European Muslims and History-making.
For more information on Our Shared Europe, visit www.oursharedeurope.org
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