The first session focused on the emergence of Western human sciences and the reasons for its dominance. The session was presided over by the President of the University of Aleppo, Dr. Mustafa Afyouni. In this session, Dr. Hamid Reza Parsania, Chairman of the Seminary (Hawza) Committee of the Supreme Council of the Cultural Revolution (SCIRI), from the Islamic Republic of Iran, addressed the "intellectual, philosophical and social dimensions of the methodology of Western Humanities", referring to the impact of the historical development of concepts of reason, philosophy and science on social sciences. He as well mentioned that "the Reason in Descartes' thought lost its transcendent identity while preserving the Enlightenment dimension, and in Kant's thought the Reason took its own identity and in post-Kantian approaches, the Reason became constructionist, secular, and communicative." Kant's meanings of philosophy had changed over different decades of the twentieth century. These changes have been associated with changing the identity of science, including the identity of social sciences.

In the second intervention, Dr. Saif Da’ana, Dean of the School of Social Sciences at the University of Wisconsin, USA, addressed the problem of Western Humanities turning into dominant sciences, worldly. Relying on Edward Said's books of “Orientalism” and “Culture and Imperialism,” Dr. Da’ana pointed out that "Said provided a framework for understanding what he called "the style of imperialist culture" that makes imagining the “other” as feasibly imaginable. For example, the Muslim is a terrorist as imagined by the Westerners, or the Muslim world as a ‘supposed place’ that requires intervention in the absence of internal mechanisms of transformation)”. For Da’ana, this means that "researchers and academics can depict or explore an imperialist (and Eurocentric) vision in research, academic and cultural debate in general.” As well, “any researcher can see the role these imperialist vision and activities play in transforming the truth of reality.” Dr. Da’ana proceeded to explicate the reasons that Said had by pointing out that "From this very beginning in Orientalism, Said sought to work specifically and directly to understand and dismantle the terminology, institutions, representations and models through which imperial power operates.”

Dr. Da’ana believed that the understanding of hegemony and imperialist policies would continue limited as long as they are recognized in isolation from the context of the imperialist culture and the role played by the humanities and social sciences. Therefore, the recognition of the dominance of Western humanities and social sciences would continue limited as long as there is a lack of understanding of the dialectical relationship of knowledge and power."

As per the role of universities in transmitting the hegemonized Western humanities and maintaining their continuity, Dr. Chandrakant Raju, a professor at a number of Indian universities described the “Western education during the colonial period as superior, and this superiority gave the basis for marketing such education as a pathway for true science and technology”. He added “many of the colonized peoples have fallen into the colonizers’ seductive trap that worked on provided them with a range of job opportunities in public institutions, and this created a leeway, over a long period, the premises for subduing the people to the Western power. In light of these circumstances, the “education continued in all previous colonies adaptable to these already created public jobs with no real capacity building learning. The hegemonized education style continued to be, as intended, a rote education

Dr. Raju pointed out firmly that “the claims made by those colonizers were soon falsified at both philosophical and historical levels in the last two decades. Unfortunately, even in the matter of emancipation from colonialism, most people read only what the West writes, following and trusting them blindly, and rejecting indiscriminately everything that are written outside the West.” In his delivered researched speech, Dr. Raju discussed the experiences of those "universities that have already been liberated from colonialism and been developing their taught educational curricula in the past decade, especially in India, Malaysia, and Iran.

The second session, titled as "Crisis of Western Human Sciences," was chaired by Mr. Abdullah Kassir, the Director General of the Center for Research and Educational Studies in Lebanon. In the first intervention of the session, the focus was on the “Humanities serving whom? Sciences for Humans or Domination?”. Dr. Abdel Halim Fadlallah, the President of the Consultative Center for Studies and Documentation from Lebanon, tackled this question by discussing the relationship of Humanities to society and power. Dr. Fadllah was convinced that “despite the enormous achievements of these sciences to humankind, they have not been able to have answers to all the questions faced by modern humans and often appear to be part of the machinery of domination and hegemony. " Dr.Fadlallah also presented "several experiences of the positive and negative interaction between Humanities and political and economic realities,” pointing out the fact that “theories and models have been used in hegemony, power change, and social engineering under the pretext of rationality at times and modernity at other times.

Dr. Fadlallah concluded that "the individual and collective propensities failed to make Humanities an avenue for establishing justice, happiness, freedom, and prosperity, and failed, as well, to prove intellectual autonomy and methodical neutrality towards the conflicting forces of power and control in the midst of power relations." He believes that such situation “confirms the necessities for a knowledge revolution to overcome these imbalances above. By this revolution, the Humanities are capable of not only to explain and interpret but also to renew and develop values that bring fruitful transformation. This is true on the basis that humans realize these transformations. Humans are stronger than social laws, historical determinants, and mathematical formulae as well as are the sources of legitimacy, strength, and continuity.

Indian scholar and journalist Dr. Claude Alvarez addressed the modern academic knowledge system in "our region during colonial domination." He considered that “the object of Humanities is one of the clearest examples of its false comprehensiveness. Its sources and inspiration were limited to Greek and Roman mythology, and most of its focus was linked to the intellectual and cultural concerns that were fit for the Europeans. If we assert that the pretenses in the field of humanities reside in the sources, origin, and ends, it may be time to abandon this field, just as it is necessary to abandon the science of anthropology because of the services that the latter provided to the colonists.”

Dr. Ahmad Hussein Sharifi, a researcher, and Jurisprudence and Doctrinal professor in the holy city of Qom in Iran, considered that “important weaknesses characterize the common concept of Humanities. This fact allows us to state that those sciences spiritless, and incomplete and inhuman." He added more in his integrated exposition that " in order to enjoy a healthy and righteous society, to establish for a sound civilization, and to build integrated humans, there is no escape for us from the responsibility of spreading the spirit of truth and humaneness dimensions in the Humanities. "

The final theme in the first day of the conference was a critique of Western Humanities and social sciences. Dr. Mohamed Said Mahdavi Kenny, former President of Imam Sadiq University (AS) in Iran, presided the afternoon session. The Director of the Center for Civilization for the Development of Islamic Thought, Sheikh Mohammed Hassan Zarkat, addressed the problem of "criticizing the doctrines of ‘scientificity’ in the West". He pointed out that "scientific accuracy and respect for standards and methodological rules in scientific research do not appear to be an issue that needs to be justified as they are preliminary principles ought not to take our time discussing them or call for reducing their burden. These are a must, and the central issue resides somewhere else.”

Sheikh Zaraket introduced the implications of the ‘scientificity’ trends in the West by stating that "critics of modern experimental science in the West have ended up in what they call ‘scientificity,’ and this phenomenon was observed to have methodological caveats that inflicted the Western in some disciplines. These caveats pivoted in the attempt to consider the scientific methodology in research as a sole arbiter for the validity and reliability of other methodologies in all fields of studies.” For Sheikh Zaraket, “the central caveat is the adoption of empirical positivist methodology in Humanities similar to the ones adopted in the field of physics or chemistry ."

In the second intervention, entitled "Western Humanities between bias and objectivity," the researcher and Iraqi writer Dr. Amer Zaid al-Waeli explained that “the Humanities should be accounted as a system of which its meaning is derived from its parts as the methodologies of social sciences have their specific context particularly as it is related to humans and their social life.”

Dr. Ramadan Barhoumi, from the University of Zaytouna in Tunisia, said that "the foregranted truth is that the knowledge theory and its sustenance are associated necessarily with a) the observation and introspection about the diversity of sciences, b) the consideration of objects’ classification regarding transcendence or immanence, and c) the examination of the extent that their methodologies are of the conceptual or material nature.

Dr. Barhoumi drew the attention to “the urgent need to determine the perspective of the epistemological question that can assist us in realizing scientific achievements particularly the ones that obtain a balance between premises and results. In a context of diversified disciplinary objects and methodologies, such a balance is essential to establish consistency and complementarity between the legitimacy of the question in its relationship with the cognitive and civilizational requirements on the one hand, and the margin that a type of science has of truths on the other hand.”

Finally, Dr. Barhoumi pointed out that "the crises of human knowledge vary from one cultural context to another, from one historical stage to the next. Our work on finding out a dividing line in Humanities between those disciplines related to relative human concerns and factors and those related to sacred references do not contradict the scientific reasoning or the mystical hermeneutics. In effect, they are human approaches structured by their context. They cannot become sacred references sourced from any doctrinal sources particularly in the context of the Islamic theology about the relationship of the human with the universe.

Finally, the session witnessed a number of opportunities for the audiences to raise questions to the plenary interveners, with an ambiance of thought-provoking development.

The Conference would be expected to complete its work on the following day of Wednesday 21^st November 2018 with three sessions that would be focused to address the diversified national experiences of culturalization in Humanities..