VISION and PHILOSOPHY


THE ARAB EUROPEAN LEAGUE (AEL) has as main reason of existence to promote and defend: 

- The interests of the Arab immigrant communities in Europe.
- The interests of the Arab world. 

Our main aim is to strengthen our community and our people, and to have a very positive interaction with others based upon mutual respect and tolerance. 

For the Arab Immigrant Community we stand for: 

·  Empowering: only strong communities are treated as equal, therefore we must work towards eliminating the weak spots and creating all necessary structures and tools to reach a more dignified and powerful position as a community within the boundaries of the law. 

·  Responsibility: you do not receive equal rights, you take them. You do not improve when others are doing the work for you, it is our responsibility and our duty to organise ourselves in order to fulfil all the needs of our community. No one will understand our problems and know their solutions better than us. 

·  Identity: We believe in multicultural society as a place where several cultures coexist equally under the law. We do not want to assimilate and we do not want to be stuck somewhere in the middle. We want to keep our identity and our culture while being law obedient and worthy citizens of the countries where we live. In order to do that it is imperative for us to work on the education level and to conceive systems aiming at teaching our children the Arabic language and history and the Islamic faith. We will resist any attempt to strip us from this right to cultural and identical diversity, as we believe it is one of the most elementary human rights. 

·  Pride: We want our children to know who they are and to be proud of it. Being lost between identities only leads to dysfunctional perceptions and distorted communication, this leads to intolerance and to conflict situations. Self-esteem and a secure self-perception are crucial for tolerating others and an incentive to communicate and collaborate adequately 

  

For the Arab world we stand for: 

· Unity: encouraging economical and political integration in the Arab world within a socially aware framework. This should lead on the long term to the establishment of a federal Arab state on all Arab soil. That state is the ultimate goal of the national struggle of the Arab people. Arab unity is also the answer to the legitimate aspirations of ethnic minorities who can have their own self-governed entities within the Arab federation.      

· Democracy: The rule of law and institutions in a pluralistic and open political regime, but also the respect of all human rights (especially the rights of linguistic and religious minorities). A democratic approach to economy and a just distribution of wealth are necessary elements for a comprehensive democratic regime. Arab Democracy is based upon the Islamic principle of Shoura, It draws its inspiration from a modern, dynamic and consensual understanding of Islam.   

· Identity: Defending and promoting our Arab Identity, language and culture is a duty that we owe to God, to ourselves and to our children. Our Arab nation has been produced by Islam and it interacted with it through the centuries to construct the Arab-Islamic civilisation. All Arabs belong to that civilisation whether they are Muslims or not, and it is the duty of all Arabs to defend the two most important components of their Identity: Arabism and Islam. 

Arabism and Islam are complementary, trying to present them as contradictory is a sickness that weakened our nation and served our enemies. That combined Arab-Islamic civilisation is own to our Arab-Christian brothers who do belong to it on the cultural and civilisation levels. It is also own to the Imazighen peoples who speak other languages next to Arabic but also belong to the Arab-Islamic civilisation and played an important role in its making.  Therefore, we will struggle to restore the Arab identity as a unifying factor in the nation’s life in order to boost the moral of our people and help it carry out its role in advancing the Arab and Islamic causes. At the same time it is imperative to emancipate linguistic minorities and respect their right to use their languages and preserve/promote their cultures. Both these processes (revival of Arab identity and emancipating minorities) should take place within the boundaries of tolerance and broadmindedness. 

http://arabeuropean.org/aboutus.html