The King Salman Center for International Peace in Malaysia aims to correct international misconceptions about Islam and combat the malicious rhetoric spread by Daesh and other terrorist organizations, Malaysian Prime Minister Mohammed Najib Tun Abdul Razzaq has said.
Addressing the Putrajaya International Security Dialogue 2018, themed “Wisdom and Moderation in Countering Terrorism,” the Malaysian PM added: “The role of religious institutions does not only include the dissemination of beliefs, but also combating terrorism and extremism.”
He called upon the leaders of the Islamic world to develop a plan for spreading the teachings of Islam and promoting moderation globally in laws and practices.
Malaysia’s PM also called on religious scholars and institutions to engage more and innovate methods for combating extremist ideologies and distorted rhetoric about religious obligations.
The event was attended by more than 1,000 representatives from 20 countries.
The secretary-general of the Muslim World League (MWL), Mohammed Al-Issa, said: “The values of moderation in Islam are far from all concepts of extremism — whether the extremism Islam is falsely accused of, or counter-extremism seen in Islamophobia, which have resulted in conflicts, violence, and terrorism.
“Counter-extremism incessantly brings the barbarity of religious extremism to attention in order to convince others of its anti-Islam theory and then pass its claims on,” he continued. “Scholars carry the great responsibility of bringing the truth to light.”
He added: “MWL’s latest statistics show that 1.8 billion Muslims in the Islamic world are moderate Muslims while only one person out of every 200,000 is an extremist, and this is a rather small number, yet troubling and controversial.”
Al-Issa explained that eliminating terrorism does not just mean fighting terrorist organizations at a military level — which is essential, but also completely eliminating extremist ideologies because “extremism was not born from a political body nor a military force, but from an ideology.”
The MWL has recently organized several forums to promote cultural communication between the Islamic world and a number of countries, civilizations, and cultures, the first of which was the “Civilizational Communication between the United States of America and the Islamic World” conference in New York last September. The United Nations participated in this event, which brought together more than 450 international representatives.
The league has also contributed to raising the awareness of Muslim minorities targeted by extremist organizations. The MWL met the leaders of these minorities across the world and invited them in Makkah to unite in an annual forum to promote moderate Islam.
The MWL contributed to a national project for positively integrating these minorities in their countries of residence while urging them to claim their religious rights and respect according to their countries’ constitutions and laws.