A recorded international symposium was held on Thursday entitled “Insulting Sanctities, Religious Beliefs, and Prophets… Goals and Outcomes”, held by Insan Organization for Rights and Freedoms, with the participation of a number of regional and international experts and thinkers.
At the opening of the symposium, the head of the Insan Organization, Dr. Amir al-Din Jahaf, stressed the seriousness of the abuses of sanctities, religious beliefs, and the prophets, and their impact on the security and stability of countries, societies, and individuals, and their repercussions on human rights in the whole world.
He explained that the symposium comes within the framework of moral principles and values and religious responsibility and within the framework of the organization’s concerns regarding issues of global public opinion.
While the Executive Director of the Dar Al-Khibra Center for Studies and Development, Ibrahim Al-Lawzi, considered the targeting of sanctities and religious symbols and the resulting retaliatory reactions at the government level, such as an economic boycott of products and commodities for a number of European countries, as a new economic burden on them.
He pointed out that Europe, at a time when it is already suffering from real economic problems, the assault on sanctities, and the Holy Quran constitutes a major security threat.
In turn, Professor of Political Science, International Relations and Public Law in Lebanon, Dr. Ali Beydoun, pointed out that Western countries are trying to find justifications for the repeated abuse of the Holy Quran under flimsy titles.
He considered the Holy Qur’an a basic title for Muslims in their daily lives and an essential basis for their existence on earth. He said, “We have recently learned that those who burn the Holy Qur’an in Sweden are motivated by the Zionist lobby for extremist political goals that serve its existential interests.”
“Political and legal limits must be set for these behaviors and abuses, regardless of international norms and the interreligious code of honor,” Beydoun added.
For his part, the journalist and researcher from England, Robert Carter, explained that there are attacks on other sanctities, such as the concept of hijab worn by women in foreign countries.
He pointed out that the main Western media plays a role in pushing this attack narrative against Islam and it is getting worse, indicating that the strategy of dehumanizing Muslims is mainly to defend this cycle of war against the Islamic world and keep it going.
“If Muslims express their anger for one week or one month and return to normal life, there will be no change to these abuses,” Carter said.
Former Russian Ambassador to Yemen and Lebanon Alexander Zasypkin called for mutual cooperation based on respect for the rights of all peoples and countries and respect for customs, traditions and religious and cultural specificities.
He urged countries to unite efforts against American hegemony and the one world pole that seeks to oppress people and plunder their wealth.
Alexander Zasypkin said, “We are currently seeing that the West is heading towards moral decay and is trying to eliminate human instinct and replace it with a consumerist society in which slogans of democracy are used for more continuation of injustice and oppression.”
For his part, the head of the Arab Center for Political and Social Studies in Geneva, Dr. Riyad Al-Sidawi, reviewed what has been monitored of a large wave of demonization and hostility to Islam and Muslims at the level of the Western world, since the events of September 11, 2001 AD.
He stated that Western societies adopt a policy of double standards. He said, “When it comes to touching any of the Jewish religious symbols, they are referred to the law of anti-Semitism.”
He pointed out that the number of Muslim immigrants in the West is large, but to this day no organized effective movement has been established in Western society, indicating that the rich and billionaire Arab countries seek to buy sports clubs with astronomical numbers and do not use the money to defend the true religion by imposing anti-Islam laws.
Meanwhile, the Iraqi journalist, Quds Al-Samarrai, from Denmark, filed a complaint against the extremists who assaulted and abused her when she took the Qur’an from them while they were trying to burn it in Copenhagen.
Islam Without Justice President Tara O’Grady from Northern Ireland urged respect for freedom of association and freedom of belief, within the framework of respect for human rights and the relevant UN declaration.
“I understand that right now things have reached a very sensitive point in history across the Middle East obviously, but especially in Yemen where there is a problem with the talks,” she said.
Regarding war compensation, O’Grady added, “We feel this is essential to include in the talks, as we know that one million service sector employees in northern Yemen have not been paid since the beginning of the war.”
And she renewed her appeal to completely reopen Sana’a airport for the arrival of medical aid and for there to be more free flow of required services, stressing that it is a very difficult situation and unfortunately, civilians are still paying the price in blood.
She pointed out that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is fueling the problem from the outside and is not a mediator, as they believe.
On the other hand, Professor of International Law at the Lebanese University, Dr. Hassan Jouni, explained that public international law warns against insulting people and religion. He said, “We are not only facing a philosophical, civilized, cultural, and human issue, but rather a legal issue.”
In addition, the head of the political bureau of the February 14 Youth Coalition in Bahrain, Dr. Ibrahim Al-Aradi, affirmed that the Arab and Islamic governments, which did not take any serious stance, gave way to these organized campaigns and repeated insults to the Holy Quran.
And he stressed that everyone should carry out their responsibilities .. He said, “We in the February 14 Revolution Youth Coalition in Bahrain, in all our statements and positions, will remain supportive of our Qur’an, our religion, and our Qur’an.”
Al-Aradi added, “The first awareness and response to this incitement against the Qur’an must come from the home. The family has a legal duty. Today, we do not say this is a responsibility on all of us. This is a mandate that we must fulfill.”
The participants in the symposium, which was held virtually via the Internet, recommended working on legislation and issuing an international law that protects religious beliefs and criminalizes and holds accountable any actions that offend religious sanctities in any way.
The recommendations of the symposium stressed the need for the United Nations to play its actual and serious role in confronting strange social and cultural phenomena and behaviors that threaten peaceful coexistence and harm societal stability worldwide as a final outcome.
It stressed the importance of concerted efforts and raising the level of coordination between all civil society institutions and focusing on the awareness aspect and the danger of irresponsible behavior on society and the consequences of that.
It also stressed the role of Islamic institutions and entities in spreading Islamic culture and the tolerance of the true Islamic religion that rejects extremist religious ideas and beliefs, and its innocence of all acts or behavior attributed to it that are offensive to others.
The symposium appreciated the position of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation to suspend the status of the Swedish envoy to the organization, and despite the importance of this step, it did not reach the level of the event and the recognized crime against the Holy Qur’an, noting that targeting Islamic religious sanctities is an important opportunity to unite the Islamic ranks and reject the methods of discrimination between the various Islamic sects. And calling on the major religious institutions to play their role in this aspect and look at the issue in a positive way.
The symposium also recommended that those in charge of media institutions work to empty space in the various Arab and Islamic media outlets to combat the phenomenon of Islamophobia and correct the misconceptions attributed to the true Islamic religion, of which it is innocent.
The symposium warned of the expected reactions and their danger as a result of those acts that offend religious symbols and the resulting targeting of individuals and societies, and the countries that do so must bear their responsibility for that.
Participants in the symposium presented a proposal to define and declare a global day of solidarity with the Qur’an, and to recall the respect for freedoms and the sanctity of all religious rites for the peoples of the world, stressing the need to hold such international symposiums and conferences to discuss and study this phenomenon and unify global visions and positions in front of it and confront and address it.
Source: Yemen News Agency