Jordan Times
Tuesday, April 18, 2006
Conference on moderate Islam to unite int'l scholars
AMMAN — A meeting of Muslim thinkers and religious leaders next week hopes to establish an international assembly promoting moderate Islam, according to a conference spokesperson.
The Moderation Assembly for Thought and Culture expects the event to yield practical mechanisms to clarify the tainted image of Islam,” according to a statement issued by the Jordanian group.
“The participants would be the founding members of the proposed international assembly. A basic mission for it would be to refute the arguments of extremists, whether they are Muslim extremists or non-Muslims who attack Islam on the basis of false assumptions,” conference spokesperson Mohammad Malkawi told The Jordan Times.
The permanent assembly, called “Global Forum for Moderation in Islam,” was first suggested in a conference the Moderation Assembly held in Amman in the summer of 2004. An international body would aim to forge cooperation and coordination with the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC).
The international forum and its partners would carry the banner of moderation in Islam and promote tolerance and democratic pluralism, in addition to establishing distinctions between legitimate resistance and terrorism.
Participants in next week's meeting are also expected to endorse a plan to establish an international satellite channel that promotes moderate Islam, according to Malkawi.
Both plans, he said, intend to “dry up the springs of extremism and defend the name of Islam against unjust campaigns.”
The three-day event, which opens on Monday, will bring together scholars of Islamic thought and political Islam from Muslim countries, as well as from Muslim communities in Europe and the rest of the world.
They include head of the Muslim Scholars Committee in Iraq Sheikh Hareth Dari, Imam Sadeq Mahdi of Sudan, top Lebanese Shiite cleric Hani Fahs, Senegal's Adviser to the President Mustafa Sisi, Head of the Islamic Movement in Israel Abdullah Darwish, and Secretary General of Morocco's Justice and Development Party Saadeddine Othman, among others.