DAR AL HARB - U.K.: AN INTERFAITH CONFERENCE

Interfaith conference on Islam begins in UK
By Our Special Correspondent

LONDON, June 4: The two-day interfaith conference on ‘Islam and Muslims in the World Today’ began here on Monday with Prime Minister Tony Blair emphatically declaring that the voices of extremism are no more representative of Islam than the use, in times gone by, of torture to force conversion to Christianity, represented the true teachings of Christ.

He said Islam was not a monolithic faith, but one made up of a rich pattern of diversity, albeit all flowing from the same fount. This rich diversity needs to be more clearly appreciated and to inform our public debates more fully is something that this conference needs to debate.

Defending his decisions on Afghanistan and Iraq, he said many Christians disagreed with these two decisions. “Leave aside for a moment whether they were the right or wrong decisions. What is damaging is if they are seen in the context of religious decisions.

“The religious faith of either country was as irrelevant to the decision as was the fact that the Kosovo Albanians we rescued were Muslims, suffering under a Serbian dictatorship, whose religion happened to be Christian Orthodox; or in helping the people of Sierra Leone, 70 per cent of whom are Muslims.”

This point, he said, was an important point because it is crucial at a number of different levels.
The problem between faiths and communities, as too often in life and in politics, is not where there is disagreement about decisions; but where there is misunderstanding about motives. In turn, this is often derived from a misunderstanding of a deeper sort: a basic ignorance about the other person's faith. “I recommend the book "The Muslim Jesus" to anyone interested in this aspect.”

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1) Interfaith conference on Islam begins in UK