Islamic Radicalism and the West

Introductory remarks by János Martonyi, former Foreign Minister of Hungary

One-day conference organized jointly by the Batthyány Society of Professors, the Research Centre for the Humanities of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, and the Danube Institute, at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, on 15th December 2015

In recent years, the tension between the Western World and the radicalized Islamic movement has grown significantly. European and American cities have been the target of horrific terrorist attacks, which, but for the vigilance of the Western security services, would clearly have been still more numerous and costly in human and economic terms. The self-proclaimed Islamic State openly and brutally persecutes Christians as well its enemies within the Islamic world, while destroying priceless treasures of non-Islamic culture. Its attempt to create an Islamic calipahte has given rise to a series of brutal conflicts, which presently threaten to escalate, and which the West has been slow to understand and to respond.

The purpose of the conference was to explore the causes, aims and strategy of Islamic radicalism, to probe the seeming inability of the West to grasp the extent to which it poses a threat to our security and values, and to consider appropriate responses.