Under the patronage of
HIS HIGHNESS SHEIKH DR. SULTAN BIN MOHAMMED ALQASIMI
Member of the Supreme Council, Ruler of Sharjah, President of Al Qasimia University
May Allah Protect Him
Al Qasimia University in Sharjah organizes the First International Conference under the title of
“Our Identity in Our History and our Heritage Memory"
On Wednesday and Thursday: 6 – 7 April, 2016 A.D.
Significance of the Conference
In light of the successive and accelerating developments daily experienced by today's man and the cultural invasion mercilessly sweeping societies, “identity" becomes one of these topics that require discussion and investigation.
Identity, in truth, is one of the terms and theories that philosophers, thinkers, me of letter and scholars exerted their utmost to define and highlight its components. Some of them thus confine it to language, religion and civilizational awareness while some others believe that it goes beyond this scope to include history, heritage, customs and traditions and the two geographical and social dimensions, as well as the components of the anthropological, psychological and philological knowledge that define the fields of genealogy.
Drawing on the cardinal importance of highlighting this topic with all its different sub-topics that identify the human solipsism and enable it to acquire new elements distinguishing it from the other egos, and out of the fact that our Arab and Muslim Society today is in dire need to properly understand this topic, especially in light of the current conflicts, imposition of the intellectual and creedal hegemony and heteronomy and the destructive ideologies, the attempts to obliterate and eradicate privacies, and the destruction of the nation's collective memory through causing it to have a massive bleeding that targets separating it from its history, identity, heritage, achievements, heroism and days, as well as every great action to which even stones and mud testify that it is our product, so that it would be like a bad tree, uprooted from the surface of the earth, not having any stability; and due to the fact that all of these attempts of destruction also target the nation's institutions carrying the meaning of its identity, the symbol of its articulating tongue and the resource of its history and heritage; due to of all these, Al Qasimia University believes that its first conference shall thus address the topic of “Identity, History, Heritage and Civilizational Awareness", under the title of
“Our Identity in Our History and our Heritage Memory"
This conference is due to be held in collaboration with the Department of History in University of Sharjah, Sharjah Institute for Heritage and Hamdan Bin Mohammed Heritage Center in Dubai.
The conference is due to offer answers to the different questions on the essence of identity, the ways of preserving and keeping it from the internal and external threats and the already existing and even expected dangers, with the aim of protecting the fundamentals of the society and belonging. This is actually what inspires us to examine this topic with its four dimensions: identity, heritage, history and civilizational awareness, to search for the Arab and Muslim security of privacy and build awareness among generations so that they would be fully able to realize the progress of their societies, countries and nation. We believe this matter could be realized if we managed to lay down mechanisms fit for reality and the contemporary social system and able to entrenching the ability of collective thinking among the members of the nation. At that point only, scholars and intellectual of the nation can carry out effective and significant reform that would in turn protect the identity of the nation, preserves its heritage, enriches its history with achievements and promotes its civilizational awareness among its members, which reinforces the role of the nation in producing the human culture.
We, in Al Qasimia University, are fully aware of these enormous tasks and major issues, believing meanwhile that the responsibility of challenging and overcoming them does not lie on our shoulder alone, but rather on the shoulder of the entire nation. Yet, we firmly believe we could contribute to making the desired generation that will be the torch lighting the way for this nation, so that it would be able to return to its former condition.
Meanwhile, we firmly believe this cannot be realized except with the good and careful investment of our history and the effective performance of our culture. History taught us that the paths of civilizations start from here.
