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UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has described the World Conference on Dialogue in Madrid held last month, as a symbol of unity among different faiths, adding that he hopes it will contribute to healing divisions and building a more secure and stable world. “There have been few periods in history when the need for dialogue among world religions has been greater. At a time of increasing divisions along cultural and confessional lines, faith communities have a crucial role to play in fostering mutual understanding and in pr-omoti-ng a consensus on com-mon values and aspiratio-ns,” Ban said in his message.

He added that the origin of many conflicts lies beyond the confines of faith. “This unique gathering of religious leaders can help debunk the dangerous myth that religion, even when properly understood, inspires violence,” he said, adding that political rivalries, territorial ambitions or competition for na-tural resources play a major role in triggering violence.

About 300 delegates from across the world, representing Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism and other faiths attended the conference which was organised by the Makkah-based Muslim World League (MWL). Participants included World Jewish Congress Secretary-General Michael Schneider and Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran, who is in charge of dialogue between the Vatican and Muslims.

“This event is itself a potent symbol of unity among different traditions. Our challenge is to see this expression of solidarity turned into a genuine force for good,” Ban said.

He highlighted three points that could make it a dialogue that delivers.

“We should reach out to young people who are vulnerable to extremist ideologies, activate the role of religious leaders as peace-builders and create platforms for engagement with religious leaders,” he said. Ban said the UN would continue to support such initiatives through its longstanding work to promote tolerance, speak out against bigotry, counter extremism and uphold the freedom of religion, as enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Bawa Jain, secretary-general of Millennium World Peace Summit of Religious Foundations, chaired the first session, which focused on dialogue in different religions.

Hussain Hamid Hassan, legal adviser at Dubai Islamic Bank, said Islamic teachings encouraged Muslims to coexist peacefully with others. Najeeb Gabriel, head of the Egyptian Organization for Human Rights, said: “The essence of religions is love, good manners and rejection of injustice.”
Rabbi Arthur Schneier, founder and chairman of the Conscience Foundation Call, USA, said the texts of the Jewish scripture called people to have dialogue with others and deal with them kindly. He also rejected the idea of a clash of civilizations. M.M. Verma, director of the Interfaith Foundation in India, hoped that the dialogue would contribute to preventing hatred among faiths.

Researchers looking at the way British Muslims are represented by the media say they have found that most coverage is negative in tone. A Cardiff University team behind the study looked at nearly 1,000 newspaper articles from the past eight years. Two-thirds focused on terrorism or cultural differences, and much of it used words such as militancy, radicalism and fundamentalist. The research was commissioned by Channel Four’s Dispatches.

Dr Paul Mason, a member of the team, said the team looked at three areas. They carried out a statistical analysis looking at types of stories and the way Muslims were described and the language used, the photographs used alongside the stories and they analysed the types of case studies used. “There are inaccurate stories about this threat that there are going to be more mosques than churches which is complete nonsense. There are roughly 900 mosques and there are 42,000 churches, so this is a ridiculous report,” said Mason.

“We looked at both nouns and adjectives and the way in which British Muslims were described. And we found the highest proportion of nouns used were about things like extremism, suicide bombers, militancy, radicalism - which accounted for over 35% of the adjectives used about British Muslims - fanatic, fundamentalist - those kinds of languages were used. And Islam was portrayed or constructed in the language as dangerous or backward or as a threat,” said Mason.

The team found that since the attacks of 11 September 2001 in the United States and 7 July 2005 in London, there had been an increase in stories about British Muslims and this peaked to more than 4,000 in 2006.

Mason added: “What you have to be careful of here is to watch the kind of generalisation of the very, very small number of people who are involved in political violence of any kind and the generalisation about Islam which is carried out by the newspapers. It is wrong as to what the newspapers do in the generalisation of those who carry out public violence, to the whole of Islam and the whole of the British Muslim community.”