As Iraq struggles to rebuild, a delegation of French personalities - intellectuals, academics, religious leaders, journalists - was able to travel to Najaf, Kerbala and Baghdad in April 2017, at the invitation of Shiite religious leaders, for meetings and exchanges with Iraqi counterparts.
The purpose of the trip was to provide support, to enable, in shared reflection, the formulation of questions about the future of a country ravaged by war. The theme of the exchanges was freedom of conscience. In several universities, Antoine Compagnon, professor at the Collège de France, spoke on "Montaigne and the Wars of Religion", offering Iraqi interlocutors, especially students, the opportunity to make connections with the situation in their country.
On their return, the French delegation organized a meeting in Paris, in the form of a symposium on "France and the Middle East (Iraq, Syria, Lebanon): from violence to hope". Four round-table discussions will bring together speakers from France and the Middle East, with different and complementary experiences, to reflect on the manifestations of violence, the experience that populations have of it, how it can be written and how we can finally try to emerge from it.If the chaos that this region is experiencing is less a question of religion than of identity, wouldn't the appropriation of citizenship be the way to create a society free of constraining identities? And wouldn't the creation of spaces for encounters, exchanges and dialogue, open to all and frequented by all, especially young people, be the priority?
