Human fraternity in a globalised world
Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, the world was already undergoing a period of change; the old things of yesterday were of little use today. Of course, such a statement should not be applied literally, but it is one of the foundations of an immediacy now required and commonplace on the planet. It is one of the aspects that most concerns a type of journalism that seeks pause, analysis, retrospective vision... So believes Jesús Bastante Liébana, writer and editor-in-chief of the newspaper Religión Digital, who highlights the importance that "everything is for yesterday" currently has.
The Foundation for Islamic Culture and Religious Tolerance organised an event entitled 'The document on human fraternity: paths to tolerance and political coexistence', moderated by Mohammed Sahiri, professor in the Department of Arab and Islamic Studies at the Complutense University of Madrid. One of the speakers was journalist Jesús Bastante Liébana, who raised several questions about the world of journalism as it is known today. In his opinion, "they have turned journalism into a spectacle". Because, he believes, globalisation means that people only get the information they are interested in - that is, the information they like, the information they want to hear - and they often leave out part of the information that, although it may not be of our strictest interest, we should know about.
The official inauguration was led by the Director General of the Foundation for Islamic Culture and Religious Tolerance, Jumaa al-Kaabi, who highlighted the individual and collective need for a commitment to dialogue and tolerance as inclusive values that help to avoid extremism and contribute to creating a culture of peace, stating that: "Dialogue implies discovering the values of the other and being open to their richness".
Liébana left some statements that went straight to the root of journalism, to the basis of what is supposed to be conceived as the basic function of the profession, at least according to his criteria: "The reason for the existence of journalism is to bring light to places where there is darkness". To have the ultimate goal of creating a critical society, but for this to happen, journalism must be the one that provides the necessary tools to be able to develop free thought and on the basis of what each person interprets according to objective facts. This society lacks tolerance for adverse thinking, for opinions that are far removed from one's own, and this distances journalists from what they consider to be the fundamental objective of their profession.
According to Silvia Martínez Cano, professor of Fundamental and Pastoral Theology at the Pontifical University of Comillas, tolerance between religions, between the different beliefs that exist and which, according to her, have the good fortune to coexist and enrich one another, was another of the subjects addressed during this talk. " Muslims and Christians living together is fortunate. It makes it possible for both beliefs to learn from each other", Martínez Cano affirmed during her speech. And it is because of this learning that religions, whether they are accepted or not, should be respected and understood as far as possible, since "caring for the religious experience is important for the bonds all religions share".
The spectrum of religion is one of the most complex and dilemma-ridden in human history. Extremism has always been the case, and it is now showing itself to be even more radical, with the appropriation of a specific line of thought and its imposition on the rest of the believers. For this reason, the professor at Comillas Pontifical University believes that "religion is not the property of a few, it can be lived in many different ways. We must help each other and learn from how others live it in order to enrich our experience".
Juan García Gutiérrez, PhD in the Department of Theory of Education and Social Pedagogy at the UNED (Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia), pointed out that the point where both themes converge is in the concept of borders. He believes that, far from causing globalisation to lose importance in a world that should be more connected, borders have become more important and have distanced global society. There is something on which all three agreed, namely that in a globalised world such as ours, the existence of world leaders, as in the 20th century, has become a thing of the past, creating a world which is interconnected, but at the same time more distant.