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CONFERENCE OVERVIEW

As the process of globalization forces the great civilizations inexorably to interact with each other, it becomes newly urgent to understand their foundations and their mutual compatibility. It is now generally recognized that each civilization is founded in a great religion and conversely that each great religion generates its own civilization. Nowhere is this more consciously and devotedly the case than for Islam.

In contrast, political liberalism begins by removing religious and other cosmic or integrating visions behind "a veil of ignorance" as a condition for the development of the political order. Some even consider the aspirations of the freedom and autonomy of the human person to be challenged by the recognition of any transcendent order.

Today the seeming collision of these two visions-religious and secular-generates tremors which shake the world. It is most urgent therefore to examine both in depth and in detail the proper relation of religion to the political order, both within the Islamic world and in the broader pattern of global interchange.

The conference with leading Iranian scholars will attempt not only to identify the rich resources of Islamic culture, but especially to envisage creatively how these can be deployed in response to the emerging democratic aspirations of its peoples within, and to other political entities in the global context without.
 After clarifying the issues in the opening day, the conference will proceed in three main steps to study: first, God as the basis of human dignity and the political order, second the relation of religion to the political order, and third the responsibilities of the faiths for the role being played by religion in the world today.