ISLAMABAD: Religion-based violence and terrorism have become the biggest threat to the world’s peace and human survival and religious leadership should jointly devise a strategy to promote love and tranquillity among all religions, a joint declaration issued by representatives of all religions Monday said.
The conference titled increasing religious extremism and responsibilities of religious leaders was jointly organized by Muslim Christian Federation and International Peace and Education Foundation, urged leaders of all religions to come up with their collective wisdom at all levels to promote the dialogue, instead of fight and hatred.
Condemning the killings of 50 Muslims including nine Pakistanis in New Zealand, the declaration noted that condemnation of brutal practice by the majority of Western secular world was a powerful rejection to the creation of a clash between Islam and the West.
Soon after the New Zealand’s incident four mosques were attacked in Birmingham, indicates that if the matter will not be taken seriously the situation would gone out of control.
The declaration urged religious leadership to come out with a firm strategy and start the dialogue instead using power as Quran provides us the basis of principle for dialogue.
The conference announced making an International Council of Religious Leaders for the protection of human rights.
The council will decide unfaithful to persons and groups, who used the religion for any kind of violence and terrorism.
The act of terrorism on the name of religion will declare the war against religions, and their actions as a rebellion against religions.
A comprehensive system of mutual conferences at the national and international level will be set up for the leaders, teachers, and media persons of all religions to understand each other and to overcome misunderstandings.
The conference demanded considering hatred for any religion should be considered a crime, and legislation should be done as is western countries against the Holocaust. Media should not be allowed to promote hate-related contents against any religion it should be declared terrorism-related crime.
Peaceful co-existence and respect of other religions should be made a part of curriculum globally.
All mediums of social media should be made of a code of ethics, and to ban the hatred and hazardous content by referring to religions.
The conference appreciated New Zealand Prime Minister for summoning the chiefs of Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and Microsoft on March 27 to explain failure to stop live broadcast of New Zealand incident on social media.
The conference urged social media to share information of hatred with concern law authorities.
The conference applaud the roll of New Zealand’s prime minister to tackle the situation with great wisdom and courage.
The conference condemned terrorism against mosques in Birmingham and demand all such elements to be brought to the court of law.
Addressing the conference Council of Islamic Ideology Chairman Dr Qibla Ayaz urged the Muslim leaders to learn lesson from the incident. So far the negative aspects of Western have been highlighted in Islamic world and now we should start contemplating about positive aspects of Western world.
Western world especially Germany had welcomed refugees from Syria.
The extremist organizations of white people had been eliminated, he said adding that now the trend of white extremism was on the increase. However they are very few in numbers.
Muslims should make Hijrat-e-Habsha as case study. Religious leaders should strive promoting love and justice and avoid talking about hatred against any community.
He said the Council of Islamic Ideology in its forthcoming session of April 4 would discuss such issues in detail.
