By IINA,
Tehran : The 21st International Conference on Islamic Unity opened here yesterday with the participation of scholars and clerics from more than 45 countries. The theme of the three-day conference is the “Islamic unity charter, criticism and revisionism”. Iran’s Expediency Council Chairman and former President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani said in his opening speech that Muslims “can be a real power” if they unite, Tehran Times reported. However, he said, unity is not possible if internal conflicts continue. “Islamic unity is a necessity for the Islamic world,” he stated, adding that relations among Muslims are in a lamentable state.
Rafsanjani said despite the fact that there are notable Ulema, there is still “division, extremism, and rhetoric”. A favorable strategy for the Islamic world is to establish peaceful relations with the entire world and leave the door open for negotiation even with the unbelievers, he stated. “Division among Muslims is the best gift for the enemies of Islam,” he noted. The global arrogance is making the utmost efforts to trick the Islamic states into hindering each other, so that it can find a way to infiltrate the Islamic world and plunder Muslims’ valuable resources such as the fossil fuel energy supplies, Rafsanjani observed. The colonialists sow discord among Muslims to make them dependent on non-Muslim powers, he added.
On the Iraq situation, the Assembly of Experts chairman stated that the discord among various religious sects and ethnic groups in Iraq is like “poison for the Iraqis and for us.” The West uses its interconnected news agencies as a vehicle to maintain its superficial unity, he opined. “They have serious differences with one another, but their dominance over the news agencies helps them cleverly cover up the discrepancies,” he explained.
Rafsanjani also called on the Islamic world’s influential clerics and scholars to present Islam as it really is, in contrast to the way it is currently depicted by certain powers.
Thinkers and intellectuals from Oman, Sudan, Egypt, Indonesia, Pakistan, Lebanon, Kuwait, Germany, the US, Tunisia, Syria, Saudi Arabia, France, Morocco, India, Algeria, Hong Kong, Qatar, Britain, Denmark, Iraq, Turkey, Gambia, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, and the United Arab Emirates are among the participants in the conference. Over 100 articles from foreign and domestic authors have been received by the secretariat of the conference of which 70 articles have been selected for presentation, he said.
Preparing grounds for unity and solidarity of the Muslim World and bringing closer various cultural and scientific views are major goals of the conference. The participants are also to promote coexistence and find way out of current obstacles including the enemies’ plots and secular thoughts. The Islamic unity charter which has so far been signed by over 2,000 Muslim thinkers and scholars will be studied by the delegates.