The excessive proper assaults a research funded by the EU that tracks the historical past of the Koran in Europe | Culture | EUROtoday

The excessive European proper has discovered a brand new goal of its criticisms, now within the educational subject. This is the mission The European Qur’anled in Spain by the historian Mercedes García-Arenal and financed by the European Research Council with 9.8 million euros within the framework of a really aggressive scientific works financing. The Euqu worldwide mission, which coordinates with researchers from France, Denmark and Italy, is a piece that the European Research Council accepted in 2018 and can finish on the finish of the 12 months. Despite its scientific and historic nature, this system, which research the dissemination of the Qur’an in Europe over the past millennium, in addition to its translation, its use and its research, has been attacked for weeks by means and political, primarily French, which accuse it of Islamic proselytism and hyperlinks with built-in teams such because the Muslim brothers; A “Islamism” and “Islamophilia” that, they are saying, undermines European values. Criticisms have generated an intimidation local weather for researchers, who denounce a political offensive towards educational freedom.

“It is an unusual and devoid of base. None of these media has bothered to inform themselves about the project, which has no ideological content, much less ‘frerist’, which is the qualifier used in France to disqualify the alleged Islamophilia,” says researcher García-Arenal in her CSIC workplace in Madrid. “Nor have they contacted any of the project participants. Ours is a European intellectual history work, it is not a project on the Qur’an as an object of veneration.” García-Arenal, like the remainder of the researchers who’ve been linked to the mission, reside these assaults with a combination of stupor, anger and a sure desolation. The researcher teaches a number of volumes of the gathering of research through which they’ve been working for years: “To have to deny that we belong to the Muslim brothers means accepting a demential mental framework, because it really entails questioning scientific and cognitive activity as such,” he explains.

“It is a job that has united teams from various countries and of various disciplines such as history, intellectual and cultural history, philology, covet …”, he says. “Its object is European intellectual and religious history. Many projects have been funded by European public entities that study the circulation and reception of other religious texts, of very diverse religions.” Arabist and historian of faith, García Arenal (Madrid, 75 years outdated) is without doubt one of the most prestigious Spanish researchers, and in 2019 he gained the National Research Award. Together along with her, they’ve participated, along with the primary researchers (Jan Loop, from the University of Copenhagen; Roberto Tottoli, of Naples Oriental; and John Tolaan, of Nantes’s), 45 predocated and submit -concealed college students. In his crowded workplace of papers, García-Arenal slides his hand by means of the backs of the books that arose from that mission. 11 volumes have been revealed with the outcomes of those investigations, and this 12 months 15. In addition, there have been exhibitions in Vienna, Tunisia and Nantes. And on June 11 one other shall be inaugurated in Granada, with help from the native college and within the premises of the Real Hospital, which could be seen till October. But for a lot of all this mental scaffolding is a direct assault on the essence of Europe.

The assaults started with Florence Bergeaud-Blackler, a French anthropologist identified for his writings towards the Muslim brothers. The author identified in Le Figaro The European mission, and pointed to names and surnames a number of the important investigators of the work, particularly John Tolean, white of most of the criticism. Several French politicians collected the glove, and there are even two interpellations within the European Assembly, of the National Group (the Marine Le Pen celebration) and the Italian League (Matteo Salvini’s celebration), on the US. Everything climbed on May 21, with the intervention of a excessive place of the French authorities, Benjamin Haddad, delegate minister for Europe, who spoke on a radio: “Do the European project of the Quran are sought, endowed with 9.8 million euros of financing?” Asked the announcer. “Not a euro of European public money should be used to finance the enemies of European values. We cannot accept that financing programs (…) go to associations linked to Muslim brothers or anti -Semitism.” Several French conservative media have echoed these political complaints, akin to Le Journal du Dimancheo Le Figarowhich titled: Anti -Semitism, Islamism: France denounces the subsidies of the EU to “hostile” entities to “European values”. The Spanish press has additionally continued carrying the research, and plenty of of those media additionally name the Anti -Semitic mission. “I imagine that, in the small framework in which they argue, if you study the Qur’an, you are anti -Semitic,” the historian shrugs.

García-Arenal blames all this to 2 elements: “The French political climate, with its Islamophobia and its cultural war”, and “the Trumpist current that without reco wants to limit the freedom of a chair and that is giving wings to the European outrage. The project, but can put in difficulty the young researchers who, once this will have to look for work. ” It can also be one thing extra pernicious, in keeping with her: “It is a warning to navigators for the future. So that those who approve this type of project to think about it, and to bring on the academics themselves who may lose the desire to embark on projects of this type.” “It’s intimidating,” he acknowledges. “One does not want to see his photo in the media or be the subject of defamation and such serious accusations. And the academics are not used to dealing with this: we live between books, we work in libraries and we do not want, nor do we know, enter to discuss in the political ring as it is being formed.”

“Saying that the Qur’an is part of the intellectual history of Europe is to face history as a complex construct,” explains Fernando Rodríguez Mediano, one other of the historians who take part within the mission. “What bothers is that what we study reveals the complexities of the history of Europe,” he says, sitting in a Madrid cafeteria. “One day I am writing a book about a Jesuit of the seventeenth century [Tomás de León, que coleccionó y se interesó por varias traducciones del Corán] And the next day I am a dangerous terrorist and a French minister says that he attacked human rights. It is a delirium, but against a delirium it cannot be argued. “” If it had been a project on Hellenism, or about the Bible, nothing would have happened. But now this interests, ”believes Rodríguez Mediano, who supposes how the sequence of occasions has been:“ Someone creates a bully, the extreme right media amplify it and then use it as a weapon the politicians themselves. The funniest thing is that then everyone confesses that they have not read the work. ”

The mission lifts blisters on all fronts. In the British Library, within the National Library and at Casa Arabo they stated that they did set up exhibitions on the research, to subsequently retract, arguing that they might not assure security towards attainable Islamist assaults of radicals that argue that they have been giving improper use to the Qur’an, or appropriating it. That is, García-Arenal, his group and the mission are between two waters. “This is neither an exaltation nor an appropriation of Islam, but a European history, which tries to illuminate some of its fractures, such as the controversies between Protestants and Catholics who used the Quran as a weapon throwing each other, just to cite an example of the many aspects we have studied,” defends the educational. “We are facing one of the borders of freedom of expression and chair,” Rodríguez concludes: “They have turned history into a political emotion, and that cannot be. It seems that historians do not paint anything, but the first thing that knows technocratic and populist is to end history, to be able to rewrite it. And there we cannot happen.”

The assaults, each García-Arenal and Rodríguez Mediano level out, haven’t cracked the help unit: the group is extra decided than ever to complete the work and the University of Nantes has promised to help John Tolean within the complaints he desires to file to means and politicians. Ninety -two distinguished lecturers have signed an open letter in protection of the mission. “Not only are we not against European values, it is that one of the many ways that Europe has had to face the problems and conflicts is to generate knowledge about them: that is a European value,” Apostille García-Arenal, which ends with a query: “Would a project of study of Greek myths be considered an attempt to spread and support Zeus cult?”. It ought to be added that the query is allegedly rhetorical. But on this world, you by no means know.