Cairo: Prominent clerics, led by Pope Francis of the Vatican, are to gather this week in Cairo for an international peace conference co-organised by Egypt’s prestigious Islamic centre of Al Azhar and the Muslim Council of Elders.
The conference, due to open on Thursday, will address a range of issues including obstacles to peace and misinterpretation of religious texts and its impact on global peace.
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Other topics on the agenda of the two-day event include effects of poverty and diseases on peace as well as peace culture in religions — realities and hopes.
Al Azhar, the Sunni Islamic world’s influential institution, has said participants of the conference will send out a “common message to the entire world” that representatives of heavenly faiths espouse the call for global peace.
“Based on mutual confidence, they will call on adherents of religions to follow them and join hands in relinquishing all causes of fanaticism and hatred and deepen culture of affinity, mercy and peace,” Al Azhar added in a statement.
Pope Francis is scheduled on Friday to address the closing session of the conference, which is held under the auspices of Grand Shaikh of Al Azhar Ahmad Al Tayyeb.
The head of the Catholic Church is due to arrive in Egypt for a two-day trip, marking the second-ever visit by a Catholic pontiff to the predominantly Muslim country. Pope John Paul II visited Egypt in February 2000.
In May last year, Shaikh Al Tayyeb made a landmark visit to the Vatican and met Francis. That visit signalled rapprochement between both institutions after years of strains.
“The Al Azhar conference will mark resumption of dialogue with the Vatican,” Mohammad Mehana, an adviser to the Al Azhar shaikh, said in media remarks.
In January 2011, Al Azhar severed ties with the Vatican after the then Pope Benedict XVI criticised Egypt’s treatment of its minority Christians over a New Year’s Eve attack on a church that killed 23 worshippers.
In the run-up to Thursday’s conference, Shaikh Al Tayyeb, a moderate Muslim scholar, promoted the message of the event.
“There should be support for all sincere efforts aimed at spreading the culture of tolerance, clemency, world peace and coexistence,” he said.
“For peace to prevail in the world, peace should be first made among leaders of different religions. Therefore, we have moved and got in touch with the Church of Canterbury, the Vatican, the World Council of Churches and several other religious institutions.”
Shaikh Al Tayyeb heads the Muslim Council of Elders (MCE), an independent international institution aimed at promoting peace in the Muslim communities, eliminating sectarianism and espousing Islam’s humanitarian values of tolerance and moderation.
Launched in July 2014 in the United Arab Emirates, the MCE comprises key Muslim scholars, experts and dignitaries.
The board members include Grand Mufti of Dubai Ahmad Al Haddad; Mauritanian Abdullah Bin Bayyah, the president of the Forum for Promoting Peace in the Muslim Societies; and Kaltham Al Muhairi, a professor at the Institute of Islamic World Studies at Zayed University in the UAE.
The council also comprises members from Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, Pakistan, Algeria, Tunisia, Lebanon, Nigeria, Sudan and the US.
