"North African expatriate writer Tahar Ben Jelloun (The Blinding Absence of Light) is well-regarded in his adopted home of France (awarded a Prix Goncourt in 1987) and around the world, having garnered an International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award in 2004 (one impressive aspect of this award is that the long list of nominees is assembled by polling those unacknowledged legislators: librarians). He is a novelist, essayist, journalist, and, no small thing, an engaging polemicist. Having his fiction on my bookshelves and thus some passing familiarity, I had not known Ben Jelloun to engage in poetics."

Watch author Ben Jelloun on video from the symposium that gathered "prominent, cross-sector speakers from diverse disciplines and the Muslim diaspora to share country-specific perspectives on Muslim communities integration in European society."

The opening event asked "How did we get here?" and explored "how Europe's socio-economic and political history led to contemporary, post-colonial immigration and integration issues."