By IINA
Dakar : Senegal’s President Abdoulaye Wade called on Muslim and Christian intellectuals to engage in a dialogue that fostered mutual tolerance and understanding. “We’ve seen that dialogue can work miracles,” he said. “…Muslims and Christians should strive to coexist and not allow extremists to drag the world into a war of religions,” Wade said. He made the appeal before the 11th Summit Conference of the world’s largest Islamic body, the 57-nation Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), which he is hosting in the Senegalese capital Dakar on Thursday and Friday.
Wade said the summit, which will bring together around 30 heads of state from the Middle East, Africa and Asia, would consider Islam’s image in the world, especially since the September 2001 attacks on the United States. Since 9/11, Muslims around the world face what their leaders sometimes call “Islamophobia” — discrimination and suspicion that associates followers of Islam with terrorism, violence and intolerance, especially in the United States and Europe. “We’ll be tackling this problem in a reasoned manner, without any excessive passion, and without turning it into a world conflict, which it isn’t,” Wade told Reuters in an interview at his presidential palace at the weekend.
The Senegalese president said he believed the past antagonism between Islam and Christianity should be consigned to history, and not be allowed to trigger a clash of civilizations. “I think the days of crusades and jihads are long gone,” Wade said, referring to the religious wars that pitted the bodies of faith in a bloody struggle for power and influence that engulfed continents and lasted centuries. The Senegalese leader said he did not believe either Islam or the West should allow individuals to push the world into a global confrontation.
He cited riots in Islamic states caused by the printing by Danish newspapers of satirical cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him). At least 50 people were killed in these riots in 2006, and demonstrations have flared again in recent weeks after Danish newspapers reprinted one of the cartoons in protest against a plot uncovered by police to kill one of the artists. “With these individuals who draw caricatures of the Prophet, we shouldn’t be making a world thing about it, an affair between Islam and Christianity, I think that’s a mistake,” he said.
Wade said he opposed individuals who waged war in the name of Islam. “Even though this emanates from our religion, I consider these people are not good Muslims. Our understanding in Senegal is that a good Muslim does not use violence against others,” Wade said. He cited Islamic texts and said the Prophet Muhammad was tolerant and had allowed Jews to worship in the mosque. Wade said he was encouraged to see Western countries like France allowing the construction of mosques in major cities.
“All we ask as Muslims is that we be allowed to exercise our religion freely” in other countries, he added.