Walid El-Khatib on the Global Enlightenment Forum

A couple of weeks ago, I had the opportunity to speak at the Global Enlightenment Forum organized by the Adam Smith Institute in London. I was there to present an essay I had written with the prompt: “How can the ideas of the Enlightenment become embedded in the Arab World?”. When I first read the prompt, I instantly wanted to disentangle some of its terms and core assumptions. What is Enlightenment? What is the “Arab World”? Is the prescriptive assumption of this prompt justified? All of these questions gave a considerable degree of liberty when trying to address the question. 

I mainly sought through my essay to challenge what I considered would be a rather lethargic way of answering the question: “The Arab World just needs to blindly import democracy, European liberalism, ideas and values”. That is an approach I consider to be flawed on various levels, notably missing the whole point of “Enlightenment”. I instead opted for a descriptive analysis rather than the prescriptive route. My essay focused more on questions of whether Enlightenment (not considered to be a mere set of ideas but rather a process where reason is sought after, where beliefs or assumptions are tested) is compatible with Islam, which I consider to be the predominant system of thought in the Middle East (or “Arab World”). How can these two paradigms interact with each other? Have they ever historically? How to communicate this compatibility to the intended audience? These are all questions I sought to explore in what was mainly a philosophical enquiry. After all, that is what the European Enlightenment fundamentally was. 

As I stood at the conference in front of a crowd of scholars, academics, politicians and students, I hoped at least some of the ideas I was putting forth could spark interesting discussions, debates and hopefully some points of agreement and convergence. I presented these ideas, notably that were that there is no 

antithetical relationship between religion and free (or “enlightened”) thought, that Islam is no different and that in fact many of the theological texts and references encourage the quest for knowledge and reason, and that historical instances such as the Translation Movement could be used to communicate a certain proximity between the “Arab World” and the study of foreign sources to add to the wealth of philosophical, mathematical and scientific knowledge. I was pleased to have throughout the event, different figures ranging from students to Oxford professors come to me and engage in discussions on my essay but also Enlightenment in a broader sense. There was a “scholarly” agreement with my ideas expressed by most of the academics I got to exchange with which I found great to hear. 

Beyond the formidable experience of presenting some of my beliefs and ideas to an audience, and the subsequent positive reception I got to witness for them, the event as a whole gave me extremely valuable insights and allowed me to embark in a host of compelling and thought provoking discussions. Whether these came from fellow students who cared to further explore the depths of such an intriguing topic, or even some of the other speakers with whom I took it upon myself to engage in conversation as much as I could. I got to attend presentations on Voltaire and his interactions with the “Arab World”, a disentanglement of scientific histories across the Mediterranean which notably put into question linear readings of history, a deep dive into some of the major intellectual shifts which heavily (and differently) impacted the European and Islamic Worlds between the 14th and 19th centuries, amongst other presentations throughout the day. I found these talks and presentations to all be highly compelling and interesting and found that my discussions at lunch and other breaks with their proponents were equally so. These “informal” discussions ranged from explorations on the foundations of logic, metaphysics, as well as broader Enlightenment topics and historical references on scientific knowledge building. 

I would argue this environment is what made justice of the event’s name as it allowed for what I would consider to be the groundworks for any “Enlightenment” process: the exchange of ideas and the quest for deeper knowledge and understanding on fundamental questions. Overall, the whole forum provided a platform for all these exchanges which not only allowed me to present ideas and concepts that I felt added to an important and complex conversation, but also to be on the receiving end of new thoughts and notions which I got to debate, discuss and familiarize myself with.