Peace, love and globalisation

By Adam Blenford
BBC News, Fez

The Fez World Sacred Music Festival has entered its 12th year

Somewhere in his soul, Faouzi Skali knew the first Gulf war would change everything.

A decade before 9/11, the softly-spoken Moroccan scholar feared the legacy of liberating Kuwait would be a world defined by dangerous tensions between the forces of politics, culture and religion.

In his home city of Fez, home for centuries to a tolerant mix of Muslims, Christians and Jews, Arabs and Europeans, Mr Skali resolved to stop the rot.

"From 1991 it was clear to me that we were entering a new era, where cultures would play a key role in realpolitik," he told the BBC.

He first staged the Fez Festival of World Sacred Music in 1994, in the hope of creating a space where people from different cultures could meet and learn from one another without fear, bigotry or prejudice.

Twelve years and one more Gulf war later, Faouzi Skali's festival is grander and - he hopes - more influential than ever.

Alongside music from around the world, the Fez festival has spawned a discussion forum, or colloquium, to address burning issues of the day. Now in its sixth year, the colloquium is quietly becoming the festival's raison d'etre.

"They may come for the music," Mr Skali says. "But they also find something else."

Culture clash

Of course, good intentions are no guarantee of success: the event is high-profile in France, but has yet really to stir the conscience of the non-Francophone world.

For 10 days each year, Fez is transformed, and so are the people who visit Faouzi Skali Words and music in Fez In pictures: Sufism in Fez

"Talking about peace and love in the media doesn't really work when a terrorist attack can quickly win a lot of headlines," Mr Skali says.

"It is much harder to explain a spiritual experience."

Nevertheless, a week before opening this year's festival, Mr Skali addressed a session of the World Economic Forum in the Egyptian resort of Sharm al-Sheikh, a body not known for regular outbreaks of high emotion.

Beside him was Katherine Marshall, a director of the World Bank, a woman who admits - "on a good day" - to having the ear of Paul Wolfowitz, the bank's president.

The pair see Fez as a "bridge" between the Davos-based WEF and the more left-leaning World Social Forum, a regular critic of globalisation trends.

Under her guidance, the World Bank has played a key role in supporting the growth of the Fez forum, despite regular contributions to the debate from some highly vocal opponents of the organisation's liberal economic orthodoxy.

"Fez brings the World Bank into dialogue with some pretty radical critics," she says.

"That's very counter-cultural within the organisation. The idea of true dialogue with people who hold radically different views is very difficult to sell to people who are true pragmatists."

Mystic city

The festival's focus on tolerance and understanding is nothing new to Fez, which has seen times change since its establishment at the end of the 8th Century.

Fez became famous for Islamic scholarship, music and dance

By mid-way through the 9th Century, Fez boasted possibly the world's most important university and was a renowned seat of learning and a city of tolerance.

Fez's fame grew with the reputation of the scholar Ibn Arabi, regarded as one of Islam's mystical pioneers, and the city became home to all manner of Sufi brotherhoods, groups who channelled their devotion to Allah through, among other things, music and dance.

This was the Islam that spurred Faouzi Skali to action.

Today, Fez's ancient walled medina is one of the world's oldest functioning cities, a UNESCO world heritage site, partially restored, partially crumbling to pieces.

Mr Skali believes the spirit of Fez should be a template for the modern world, a world integrated by globalisation but, he suggests, "more homogenised" than ever before.

"When I was young there were Jews, Christian and Muslims in Fez. It isn't like that now."

Ambitions

The festival now attracts the patronage of Morocco's king, and boasts a musical line-up ranging from European baroque through Tibetan vocals to African anthems.

The festival got off to grand start at Fez's Bab Makina

Concerts are held in a range of venues scattered in the north-west of the old medina, with the showpiece evening events watched by 5,000 people in a medieval courtyard in front of one of the vast city gates.

Free performances are staged each day in shady squares, while at night Sufi ensembles play to a mixed crowd of tourists and locals.

The five-day forum agenda for 2006 is certainly ambitious, spanning economics, Islam and the art of forgiveness.

And as interest grows, so does the scope of the forum: in an effort to translate the discussions into practical action, Faouzi Skali plans to form a permanent secretariat to keep the "spirit of Fez" alive throughout the year.

"For 10 days each year, Fez is transformed, and so are the people who visit," Mr Skali says.

"If it can work for 10 days in Fez, why not for a year? If it can work in Fez, why not in Jerusalem?"