El Qantara project it resembles the Arab World Institute: in the spirit of openness and peace, in its modern form and media aimed at both the specialist and the profane and its organization, in which multiple partners are involved (Algeria, Spain, France, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco and Tunisia) plus one guest country (Egypt). Qantara aims to build or, rather, strengthen the bridge between North and South, between East and West Mediterranean.
Mainly, it is a political project conceived Mediterranean identity as a unifying and interdependent. Despite the many conflicts that mark its history, the Mediterranean has never been a border, but a connecting element-in the time and space- multiple civilizations and cultures. Even today, the Mediterranean remains the crucible that unites us around much more important values that apparent disagreements. Both project partners as the IMA refuse to consider these dissensions as inevitable and try, in collaboration with the European Union, to establish and enhance our Mediterranean identity. Throughout the centuries studied under the Qantara project (since the end of late antiquity and the rise of Islam to the end of the Ottoman Empire in the nineteenth century), through the three revealed religions values containing the contributions of antiquity and spread, above all, its philosophical foundations. The Mediterranean has always had this huge diversity and, even in times of war, has been at all times where they were exchanged and sharing of material goods (screens, gold, spices) and spiritual values, knowledge, science and technology.
– Dominique Baudis. President of the Institute of the Arab World
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