The Inter-faith Dialogue Conference concluded its sessions in Makkah Friday amid hopes of a great Muslim work for cooperative and positive interaction between people of different religious traditions. The conference has been an opportunity to boost the understanding of others' values, and commitment to the world. Upon its conclusion, the participants delivered some insightful suggestions empowered to increase cooperation among Muslims nations and nations of other faiths. Dr. Abdullah Omar Naseef, secretary general of the Islamic Relief Organization suggested establishing an Islamic center to study other religions. Naseef who presented a paper focusing on cooperation between the different Islamic organizations said that Muslims have to look deeply into other cultures and beliefs. "We have to follow up on other media and cultural activities so that we can understand them more before we engage in any dialogue," he said. He highly stressed close cooperation between Muslim leaders and scholars to materialize a mechanism to understand the other. "As a start, it is important to establish a website to introduce the efforts that have been exerted in setting up the dialogue conference," he said. But funding remains the backbone of any organizational effort. "To materialize this effort, a budget, a general secretariat, and coordination committee would be needed" he said. The conference sessions were not purely religious, however. Philosophy of religion and civilization was part of the discussion to boost more understanding of the intrinsic correlation between the two in Islam. Sheikh Badr Hassan Al-Qassimi, deputy chairman of the Islamic Fiqh Center in India, believed that the inter-faith discussions should be expanded to include other cultures and civilizations as well as other religions. Al-Qassimi, who discussed philosophy and religion, said that for any integrated dialogue plan to succeed, it should include people of all cultures and schools of thought to save humanity from what would threaten its core existence. He thought it would beneficial to utilize scholarly work of non-Muslims about Islam such as Mahatma Ghandi as well as other figures. Sheikh Naji Alluosh of the Sharia and Islamic Studies Institute in Lebanon said the media should be used to reinforce the issue of intercultural and inter-faith dialogue. "I suggest that there should be satellite TV dialogue channels to discuss other cultures to pave the way for more understating and wider discussion," Alluosh said. He added that such channels could be used to discuss economic, family, cultural dialogues where Muslim scholars could give their opinions in different disciplines from an Islamic perspective. __
