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H. Ramzy: Address to Interreligious Leadership Conference 2017
Written by Dr. Sheikh Hojjat Ramzy, Director, Oxford Islamic Information Centre, UK
Monday, November 13, 2017
Address to Interreligious Leadership Conference 2017
Seoul, Korea, November 10 to 14, 2017
Dear brothers and sisters in humanity,
I bring a greeting of peace: assalamu alaikum wa rahmatullah
“May the peace and blessing of Almighty Allah be upon you all.”
In the Holy Qur’an, Almighty Allah tells us:
“O mankind, We have created you all from a male and a female, and have made you into nations and tribes, so that you might come to know one another. Verily, the noblest of you in the sight of God is the one who is most conscious of Him.”
Brothers and sisters, here Allah says that He made us into nations and tribes to understand and learn from each other, not to fight amongst ourselves.
Again, Allah says in the Qur’an:
“And if Allah had so willed, He would surely have made you all one single community: but He wants to test you to see whether you do right or wrong.”
Dear friends, without a doubt, the human world is in turmoil. Pollution, disasters, disease and destruction cover the whole planet. Many die needlessly every day. Torture, rape, ethnic cleansing and genocide have become weapons of war.
We all need to stop and think. We all need to go back to our scriptures and rediscover the verses of peace that have been ignored, forgotten or misinterpreted as verses of war and conflict. Dear religious leaders, friends, we all need to teach our followers that it is vital to understand the religions, the cultures and the ways of life of others. The lives of all brothers and sisters in humanity must be respected and held sacred.
We need to unite, and truly unite, brothers and sisters. We are blessed to have another opportunity to unite under the Interreligious Association for Peace and Development (IAPD).
As one of the three million Muslims in the United Kingdom, and the nearly two billion across the world, I fully support the excellent work of UPF and the IAPD, and invite you all to join us to bring peace and brotherhood and sisterhood to the four corners of the globe.
Together, united under UPF and the IAPD, we can bring peace to our generation and the generations to come. Brothers and sisters, I would like to ask you to hold your hands together and say “we all united to bring peace to the world.” Amen. God bless you all.
To go to the Interreligious Leadership Conference Schedule 2017, click here.