Sufism honoured at the French Senate: presentation of the Fes Festival
The 12th edition of the Festival of Sufi Culture, which ran from 19 to 26 October 2019 in Fes, was officially presented on Friday 11 October in the rooms of the Senate. Its main theme was “Sufi culture, a spiritual humanism for our time”.
Choosing to bring together the notions of “humanism” and “spirituality”, in the present context, makes it possible to frame the debates from a different perspective to that of the Western Renaissance. The festival’s director, Faouzi Skali, explains this choice: “The first term refers, in Western history since the fourteenth century, to a movement of thought whose aim was to emancipate itself from the transcendent orders of religion and the sacred. In its own way this movement belonged to an already old debate, in the West as in the East, between faith and reason, religion and politics, freedom and transcendence. The philosophical answers that emerge from such a debate in one era or another are never innocent, for they carry a promise of civilisation, a choice of society. Today this pairing of words can prove fruitful, given that religions too suffer the excesses of a dessicating formalism that ends up denying the most evident values of our humanity.”
By way of conclusion, Faouzi Skali delivered a message of openness: “Sufism is not only a profound and poetic mysticism expressed in universal works such as those of Rumi or Ibn ’Arabi; it is also a universal heritage of humanity, of all humanity, whatever its convictions or religious affiliations.”
In the press
- Faouzi Skali presents Sufi culture before the French Senate (Challenge.ma)
- Faouzi Skali: “Sufi culture is a way forward for another possible civilisation” (Le Matin)
- Reaction of Senator Nathalie Goulet on Twitter
