Azerbaijan, Baku, Feb. 10 /corr. Trend E.Ostapenko, T.Jafarov / If proceeding from a single position, all religious leaders of Islam and Muslim intellectuals can present to the world their position and Islamic religion in a true form, it will be possible to avoid the dissemination of islamophobia.
"Actively attending international conferences and events, Muslims must openly demonstrate their position to the peoples of world and present true Islam, notifying the world community of its ideas and regulations," ayatollah Seid Hashim Huseyn Bushehri, deputy chairman of Union of Scientists of the Center of Religious Sciences, told Trend in a telephone conversation from Gum on Feb. 10.
During his speech in the Parliament of Saudi Arabia, the President of Turkey Abdullah Gul mentioned the need for the unification of the Muslim countries to jointly combat islamophobia spread in the world.
Gul said that the best methods of preventing islamophobia is to hold inter-religious dialogue.
The term of "islamophobia", which is literally translated as fear before Islam, is used to express intolerance towards Islam, which disseminated in Europe and America starting from 1990. In the countries where islamophobia exists, discrimination with regards to Muslims obtained wide acceptance, opinion on Islam and Muslims are the source of terrorism. Obvious example for it is the publication of cartoon, which depicted Mohammed Prophet as terrorist, in the Jyllands-Posten newspaper on Sep. 30, 2005 in Denmark.
In support of Danish newspaper, seven different newspapers in France, Germany, Holland, Italy and Spain re-printed this cartoon.
Islamophobia especially spread in the West, firstly in the USA, after the act of terror on Sep. 11, 2001 in New York, which was committed by terrorist organization Al-Qaeda.
One of the ways of preventing the biased attitude of the representatives of different cultures and religions towards each other is the inter-religious dialogue. Currently the best-known initiator of inter-religious dialogue in the Muslim world is the leader of one religious community in Turkey, Fatulla Gulen. Initiated by Gulen, the meeting between the well-known religious leaders of Christians and Muslims and the meeting for establishing the dialogue are considered the best ways of preventing islamophobia.
The press secretary of the Organization of the Islamic Conference, Isam Shantin considers that the Muslims have the possibility to combat islamophobia. Simply this fight must be held not at the level of ordinary people, but at the official level.
"In actuality no one religion allows violence. Therefore, the Muslims have the potential possibility to avoid islamophobia, which is possible through holding dialogue and meetings at the official level," Shantin told Trend in a telephone conversation from Jidda.
European expert Shada Islam considers that today islamophobia spread in the West not so widely. The representatives of Islamic and Western culture must know each other nearer and hold dialogue to prevent islamophobia, the expert said. He also said that it is necessary that in this process the religious and political leaders would be in the first rows.
"In the period of globalization, all religions and religious groups must be in close contact with each other for the peaceful co-existence," Islam, coordinator of Asian Forum and Muslims in Europe Forum of the European Union, chief expert of European Policy Centre, told Trend in a telephone conversation from Brussels.
The expert considers that the Muslim religious figures and intellectuals must try to present the essence of Islam to the world community.
Iranian expert Bushehri said that the best method of combating islamophobia is to create union and unity of
the Muslim countries. If the positions of the Muslim world in the world community are united, then the world community, in particular the countries, where islamophobia widespread, will not be able arrange provocations against the Muslims, the expert said.
Nearly 25 million Muslims reside in the European Countries. Large part of the Muslims in Great Britain are Pakistanis, in France - Muslim-Arabs from the countries of North Africa, and in Germany - Turks.
B.Hasanov and R.Hafizoglu contributed to the article.
Do you have feedback? Contact our journalist at: [email protected]
...