The papers published here in this small volume are from a meeting held in May 2009 which looked at evolving currents in Salafism and Shi’ism. The purpose of the meeting was to address the future – and what this imminent future might bring to this region. The purpose related to a sense that this region is entering into a new era; a new political situation, which is going to be quite different to that which has been experienced in the past. At the end of the last great western intervention in the Muslim world – in the early 1920s – into this void, stepped the colonial powers – primarily Britain and France. Now, however, it will be the peoples and the states of this region – rather than outside powers – that for the first time in centuries – will determine the future of this region. So there will be a struggle – a struggle to dictate what may be the vision and political orientation of the region, and also a struggle for the future shape direction of Islam.

At this meeting what we were trying to do was to look at where there might be points of common destiny, in the face of a different future; a new era, with all sorts of challenges not only politically, but economically and socially, too. And to think what form that common destiny might assume. In this context, what we can address is how to mobilize people, and to help them visualize a better way of living, rather than see the problems of the region mainly in terms of competing and clashing projects.
It is clear that the old ‘narratives’ – even those embedded in the origins of Islam – may seem no longer so relevant to young people today immersed in a materialist world. This does not signify that a peoples’ narrative and history no longer carries meaning in the contemporary world. Always, when a community is in search of solutions for newly arising problems, it needs to return to its origins; to its founding narratives for fresh insights – in this way meaning and symbolism is renewed and can provide the solutions to tomorrow’s problems.

Equally, a change in language can be profoundly important in this task of refreshing ‘old truths’ and in giving people the energy and the hope of aspiring to a higher mode of living – of being able to see themselves as better than they now are. In this way, it may be possible to lay down the burden of history, and to try to derive some essential principles and key causes, such as the Palestinian struggle, around which all can gather in a shared destiny that sidesteps internal confrontations, which surely will be fuelled and encouraged by outside interests.

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