Organisation of Islamic Cooperation
The Collective Voice of The Muslim World
Date: 13/11/2008
Mr. President, Your Majesty, Your Excellencies, Distinguished Ladies and Gentlemen, It is a distinct honour for me to participate in this High-level meeting of the United Nations General Assembly under the agenda item 'Culture of Peace', sponsored by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and a host of member States. I would like, at the outset, to thank the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia for this very timely and important initiative to discuss a matter of great relevance to a major preoccupation haunting the international community today, and portending dire consequences for the cause of world peace and security, if it is left unchallenged. As the General Assembly presently discusses the 'culture of peace', we see very clearly that disturbing signs foreboding instability, tension, and even hostility loom over the horizon. The present picture stands in total contradiction with the picture of the immediate past. Throughout the second half of the last century, a variety of approaches and attempts advocating dialogue among faiths have taken place. All these approaches emphasize shared beliefs and common values. These activities were undertaken mainly out of the necessity to oppose apostasy propagated by communism. With the dissolution of the Soviet Union, at the closing stages of the last century, a serious setback to the efforts of inter-religious dialogue took center stage. Communism was replaced by Islam as the virtual enemy of the West. Islam was at the forefront of efforts mobilized to defeat communism. It is paradoxical that, once the communist ideology was defeated, Islam was chosen as the new potential enemy to the West. Over the last two decades, the focus of world politics has shifted from political and ideological conflicts between the world's superpowers, to the so-called clash of cultures and religions, which might lead to a serious discord of the world’s civilizations on a global scale. As we speak, a special emphasis is placed on the tension between Christianity and the Muslim world. The tension is based on the false assumption in the West that there exists a primordial and intrinsic antagonism or enmity between these two civilizations. The well-known theories of the clash of civilizations and its self-fulfilling prophesy seem to have been legitimized and corroborated by some unfortunate events and conflicts in the Middle East and beyond. The powerful tools of media are mobilized to invent a conceptual link between Islam and terror. Phrases like Muslim terrorists or Muslim terror have become common place. This demonic portrayal frequently propagated by the media and the misrepresentation of Islam and Muslims became the most persistent and virulent sources of the phenomenon of Islamophobia, resulting in prejudicial practices and incitement against all Muslims without any distinction. The result is that Islam, an Abrahamic religion, and one whose name means peace is being frequently associated with violence. This state of affairs does not bode well for the concord and stability in international relations. It calls for immediate and concrete measures to be taken, in earnest, to stem these unfounded claims and tendencies. It is in this atmosphere of disquieting uncertainty that we acknowledge the timely and wise initiative of His Majesty King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia. We welcome wholeheartedly this approach which we regard as an affluent tributary to the global efforts being presently exerted to restore peacefulness, harmony and congeniality at the world’s stage. By the same token, we endorse this initiative and all its related activities. Emanating from an illustrious and magnanimous Monarch, this initiative will, no doubt, meet with instant acceptance by all those who are keen to champion the prevalence of peaceful coexistence and cordial relations between the adherents of all religions of the world. Its prime objectives is not preaching a theological unity, but rather to exchange knowledge and raise awareness of the common attributes of all religions and correct all misconceptions in a quest to bring about peace, security and stability to the entire world. It also calls for a focus on the reflection of the consensus of faiths and promoting global ethics. The aim of this initiative is not to make religions similar or identical, but to acknowledge the differences as serving the needs of the peoples of different beliefs, and to learn to interact creatively and effectively with those differences. The Saudi initiative exhorts the international community to focus on the common denominators of religions, namely deep faith in God, lofty principles, moral and noble values. It seeks to vanquish hatred through love, bigotry through tolerance, vice and evil through virtue, iniquity through justice, conflicts and war through peace, and racism through human brotherhood. As we hail the initial successes of the Alliance of Civilization and appreciate its realistic and result-oriented activities. We, nevertheless, believe that the Alliance works as a catalyst for the multitude of efforts dealing with dialogue among cultures. The Alliance stands to greatly benefit from the Saudi Monarch’s initiative. The Muslim world’s mantra after 9/11 stressing that Islam is about peace, harmony and dialogue is good but it is not enough. The Saudi initiative meant to go beyond that and aspire to create a new conversation and discourse for interfaith dialogue for our present times. I would like to stress at this juncture that tolerance was and still is the benchmark of Islam, that tolerance is borne out of the very nature of this global faith. Islam is not an exclusive or novel religion, but it is a part of the whole history of religion. It continues and confirms the previous scriptures. It has been tested throughout 1400 years and has proved to be the religion of peace, pluralism, and acknowledgment of the other. The OIC, in a quest of safeguarding the spirit of dialogue among cultures proposed the initiative of dialogue among civilizations in 1998, as a civilizational response to the theories of the clash of civilizations. This idea was endorsed by the UN General Assembly, which set it in motion throughout the year 2001. This initiative had a deep impact on the world’s peace and security. As the sole official intergovernmental organization representing the Muslim world, the OIC firmly believes that the diversity of cultures and religions is an acknowledged and essential part of the world in which we live. This fact should be considered a source of major wealth on which to build a more human, just and harmonious world. We believe that it is incumbent upon us all to do our utmost to educate ordinary people to conceive culture and civilization as a universal human heritage, to which all people have contributed, and which all people should help to share and enlarge. This conception is most relevant to our time, and its relevance is a condition for a worthwhile interfaith dialogue and inter-relationship leading to greater understanding, concord and harmony among all nations and ushering an era of reliable peace. U.N. Headquarters – New York 12-13 November 2008.
