Abdul Aziz bin Mohiuddin Khoja inaugurated the fourth Saudi Conference of Writers in Madinah, which was selected as the capital of Islamic culture for the year 2013.
The conference honored literary clubs supporters, including institutions and individuals for their support and encouragement of activities and programs of literary clubs in the Kingdom.
Khoja, at the opening of the ceremony late Wednesday, highlighted the importance of literature and culture and welcomed more than four hundred participants and guests.
“This conference has received great support from the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques, who has graciously considered the conference of high status,” Khoja said. “His Excellency has expressed a great deal of support and services to writers and intellectuals due to his interest in the literary and cultural heritages, based on his platform of faith — may God protect him – and his conviction that literature and culture offer the world a balanced view toward the future.
“The Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques believes that dialogue is the key to cooperation, negotiation, brotherhood, mutual understanding and masterly achievement at the level of peoples and nations. His convictions, May God bless him, is that knowledge is power and literature produces vital energy, while professional work is the foundation of success.”
Khoja also said that holding the conference in Madinah is the based on the recommendation by the Saudi Conference of Writers to hold the conference every two years in different regions to represent the universality of literature.
He said the Fourth Conference has passed through many changes and has grown and developed in various aspects and in various fields.
“On this national occasion, ” he said. “We extend our sincere thanks and praise to the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz, may God protect him, for his patronage of this conference. We also thank the Crown Prince, His Royal Highness Prince Salman bin Abdul Aziz, May God save him, for his lasting support of literature and culture in our country. I specifically thank His Royal Highness Prince Faisal bin Salman bin Abdulaziz, Governor of Medina region, for his blessed efforts to overcome the difficulties and for the success of this conference.”
Khoja said the need for a writers’ conference has become urgent to since the circle of literature has widened, the horizon of writing has extended in various fields, and the visions of critical discourse have crystallized to inspire the new international critical curricula.
He said new tools in literary writing have emerged due to the explosion of the knowledge revolution, and the emergence of digital writing and the Internet provide literary texts in various forms to the mind of the Saudi youth.
This phenomena is a sign of the emergence of new authors. Hence the title of the Saudi Conference of Writers in its fourth session was decided to be “Saudi Literature and its Interactions, he said.
“The aim of this conference is to support and enrich the literary movement in our country by studying the spread of the Saudi creative literary in its various forms and through evaluating and highlighting its intellectual, artistic and aesthetic values as well as through monitoring literary movement and transformations,” he said.
Writers’ meet opened in Madinah
