Leading Muslim and Christian clerics in the Middle East issued a statement on Wednesday urging against linking Islam to terrorism, following a conference in Cairo on coexistence.

The conference, hosted by the prestigious Al Azhar institute, comes as sectarian conflict continues to ravage the region and after a spate of militant attacks on Christians in Egypt.

It also comes after US president Donald Trump’s administration shifted from the vaguer language of its predecessor by identifying its fight as against “radical Islamic terrorism.”

Former president Barack Obama, who led an international coalition against Daesh in Iraq and Syria, had argued that calling the militants “Islamic” gave them legitimacy.

A closing statement read by Al Azhar’s Shaikh Ahmed Tayeb demanded Islam not be associated with terrorism

“The conference demands that those who link Islam and other religions with terrorism immediately stop,” he said.

“Judging Islam by the criminal actions of some who associate with it opens the door to describing all religions as terrorism, which justifies extremist modernists’ argument that societies must be rid of religion,” he added.

Speakers and participants in the conference said diversity was critical in order to safeguard Muslim-Christian coexistence that has recently been shaken by militants’ persecution and attacks.

“Islam does not coerce anyone into embracing it,” Shawki Allam, Egypt’s Grand Mufti, proclaimed forthrightly.

“There is diversity in religions. This is evidence that diversity is an inevitable and deliberate thing for humanity,” Shawki Allam told the conference.

“We have to get out of the ghettos we are living in,” Huw Thomas, a Christian cleric from the United Kingdom, said.

“We have to dispel fears among followers of different faiths, and learn from and about each other,” he told Gulf News on the sidelines of the conference.

“If you focus on the common good and common humanity, this will help a lot in defeating extremism.”

Father Thomas believes that diversity can be nurtured through education.

“If we put more into education, children will come out, knowing a lot about each other.”

The two-day conference was attended by Muslim muftis and Christian clergy such as Lebanese Maronite Patriarch Beshara Rai, as well as representatives of US and British churches.

The statement urged fostering understanding and equality between religions.

In Egypt, a Daesh affiliate called for war on the Coptic minority after bombing a church in December, killing 29 people

source : gulfnews