Speech of Dr. Al-Adzhili Farhat Al-Miri, counsellor of the secretary General of the world Islamic call society

In the name of Allah! Gracious and merciful! Let Allah bless and greet all representatives of all prophets and envoys!

Your Excellency, dear Mr. President Nursultan Nazarbayev, Dear guests,
I'd like to greet you with Moslem greeting: Let the peace and mercy of Allah and his welfare be with you!

First of all, I'd like to express my gratitude to this hospitable country, to the President, who took the initiative, and also for his great attention to the dialogue for the sake of peace and development. It is very pleasant for me to deliver the greetings of Dr Mohamed Ahmed Sharif Secretary General of the World Association of Islamic Call, who wishes this Congress to be successful. He brings his apologies for impossibility to be present at this Congress due to extraordinary circumstances.

One of the main goals of our Association is the importance of the dialogue, co-existence and recognition of other religions. This is carried out not only theoretically, but in practice, by means of conducting different programs with other people.

Our Association had a dialogue with the Catholic Church in February 1976 in Tripoli in Libya. A lot of outstanding scientists of the Islamic World and representatives of the Catholic Church took part in this conference.

Let Allah be praised!

The program of having dialogues continued within the last 30 years with different aims. The Association carries on lectures. Also several Christian leaders were invited for conducting lectures. It is very pleasant for me to inform that All Holiness Bartholomew 1st was there, who visited us in Tripoli, as we visited him in Istanbul. We have a lot of joint programs.

It is also very pleasant to tell you about the presence of Ecumenical Patriarch at the recent meeting. More than 500 persons were at this meeting. I have nothing to add after the words of the President. But I think that the theme of this dialogue is very important, because religion plays an important role in the life of people. But as English orientalist Montan Gangrivuad said in his book "Islamic political thought", religion provides common aims in life of a man, helps to coordinate all forces for the sake of realizing these aims.

As His Excellency Mr. President confirmed, a human life has no value, if a person has no cultural base, where he draws the sense of his life from. Hence occurs the dissolution of a definite culture, which means the dissolution and annihilation of values which humanity adheres to. When religion is the main component of the culture, then protection of the cultural peculiarities accept the saint measuring in the way, we observe it today in different parts of the world.

Dear guests,

I drew a lot of things from our meetings. Everybody here emphasized the importance of respect to each other, recognition of peculiarities of other religions, realizing clearly that the difference is one of the laws of life.

Moreover, it should be noted that difference is one of the divine miracles in the world. If it failed to exist, then life would not have the sense, and existence would not have its fascination. I want to draw your attention to some problems, which, to my mind, deserves to be considered at this meeting. They are as follows:

Firstly, the influence of the dialogue, both positive and negative, began to enlarge as a result of dynamic development of means of communication, information technologies and availability of access to different sources of information. And that is why, it is very important to realize that any negative result of this dialogue will not be limited by the dialogue framework or its participants and organizers.

Secondly, the conflict of civilizations, according to the opinions of the majority of people, has deviations. We should obstruct this category in order to safeguard humanity against evil. They look at the truth one-sidedly, analyzing the history only from the position of strength and weakness, regardless mutual penetration, mutual enrichment of civilization and do not take into account mutual relations between nationalities and people. This brings not only evil and cataclysms to humanity, but holds away from the essence of all religious faith, depriving them of the sense of kindness, and opens the road for evil.

Thirdly, some people give unfair estimate to events. For example, Christians are blamed for death of those who were killed in the period of two World Wars. Also, we should not stick the label of specific terrorism on Islamic religion, only because of the events of September 11, 2001 when Moslems were blamed for it. Everything that happens in the world now is far off from Islam. All world religions are prohibited to do harm to humanity and act for conquering the world.

Fourthly, interaction and rendering of assistance to the weak and needy people is the aim of any meeting. There won't be peace in the world unless we unite our strength to help destitute people. The confusion of conceptions, their distortion is the distortion of each religion.

And the last, hindering to the international organizations, which act for the sake of international safety, results in spreading of injustice feeling all over the world. This can be threatening for the political future of the world, and also to spreading of violence and extremism, which extended for the last years as a result of injustice in the world.

I want to draw your attention to this situation. You know them better than I do, however, I call to your consideration as we can be proud of all our religions that are for peace and mutual understanding.

I'd like to emphasize that our association is ready to cooperate with you as it is based on belief in justice and aspiration for the creation of calmer future for the sake of humanity.

I would like to thank His Excellency Mr. Nursultan Nazarbayev and Mr. Nurtai Abykayev. I want to thank the Republic of Kazakhstan for the sincere desire to hold a dialogue, aimed at peace and progress. I wish your work to be succeeded. Thank you for understanding.