NNA—Minister of Culture Ghassan Salameh participated today in the opening of the International Orientalism Conference in Doha, which was attended by 600 researchers and intellectuals from around the world.

Salameh was a guest speaker at the opening session, "Towards Balanced Civilizational Communication," which also included Gambian Foreign Minister Mamadou Tangara, and Director of the Centre for Middle Eastern Studies at Oxford University, Eugene Rogan.

In his word, the Culture Minister touched on the developing concept of Orientalism and its criticism, noting that ideas have regained their weight at the expense of identity elements. He explained that in the past decades, we reached considerations of identity and inherited elements without giving sufficient importance to notions which are usually adopted with complete freedom, unlike the identity that is given upon birth.

In response to a question about the situation in Gaza, Salameh considered that "what happened in Gaza raises doubts about the effectiveness of international laws, international systems, and the shared international community of values," adding that "there is a pre-Gaza phase and a post-Gaza phase."

Salameh underlined that we must come to an understanding from now on that if there are truly universal values, they must be applied to everyone with the same force and the same strictness, without the exclusion of countries, as is the case with Israel's actions in Gaza.

=========R.Sh.