Merkel urges Europeans to discover Islamic civilization

May 27, 2010, 10:03 GMT

Doha - German Chancellor Angela Merkel urged Europeans Thursday to discover Islamic civilization as she gave a major speech on her view of the troubled ties between Islam and Christendom.

She said Europeans had to get it into their heads that European intellectual leadership was not something set in stone.

'We in Europe sometimes forget the fact that over many centuries, the Arab world was far ahead of us in science and the arts,' she told told an audience in the Museum of Islamic Art in the Qatar capital, Doha, where many treasures of Islamic art are on display.

Europeans were generally not well informed about Islamic art and civilization, she added.

Merkel heads a party, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), which has been moving cautiously to engage with Islam and has been conducting government talks with the 5 per cent of German residents who are Muslim.

However the CDU rejects Turkish entry to the European Union, saying the EU is based on Christian values, and some of its rightist supporters accuse Turkish immigrants of failing to integrate.

Merkel said religious tolerance and freedom of opinion were important on both sides.

'We need respect for differing perceptions about values,' she said, adding that global developments made cross-border exchange easier. Merkel, who has a doctorate in physics, said the 'true source' of prosperity and stability for all was education.

Investing in a knowledge-based society was the key step to closing down networks of terrorism, she said. Rich nations like Germany had to do more to help people in disadvantaged parts of the world.

She gave the speech less than a year after US President Barack Obama sought to recalibrate western relations with the Islamic world, telling a Cairo University audience he wanted to end 'negative stereotypes of Islam.'

The German leader, who is making a swing through the Gulf states this week, said the precarious security in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen would prompt Germany to engage more with the Gulf states and step up two-way investment. 'We have to work harder on this,' she said.