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Image: Forum for promoting Peace in Muslim Societies

Shaykh Abdallah Bin Bayyah receiving the 2014 Spiritual Solidarity award by the Adyan Foundation from Father Fadi Daou

will become as your dearest friend” (41: 34). The message of

this verse is that goodness brings about goodness and love

engenders love. Can we not then hope to foster these shared

human values by making our own conduct exemplary – by

being tolerant, generous, honest and trustworthy and thereby

convincing the ‘other’ who is just as human and who shares

the same love for these values? Good conduct results in recip-

rocal good conduct.

Generosity cultivates generosity. Convincing others of the

ways of goodness is the most important humanitarian issue.

We wish to take from Plato his words when he said: “The

morality of the world is an expression of the victory of the

power to convince over the power of force.”

The values of humanity lie in their ability to have conviction

– to convince and to be convinced by various means of substi-

tuting one thing for another. There are things which are better

and others which are worse. Civilization is essentially the pres-

ervation of a mode of life by means of the inherent conviction to

respond by choosing what is best. The use of force, under any

circumstances, is a failure of civilization, regardless of whether

we are talking about society in general or the individual.

The harmony that we must aspire to is not just between

various cultures and societies. We must bring about such

harmony within the individual as well. People have a varied

cultural heritage, which sometimes develops into a crisis of

values within the individual, and which needs to be transformed

into inner harmony and a source of personal enrichment.

A person can be of Asian origin, Muslim by faith and

British by nationality and upbringing – all at the same time.

By cultivating the value of tolerance over violence and hate,

we channel people’s energies into productive activity that

contributes to the general welfare. No one should ever resort

to warfare or to violence to further their goals.

Religious leaders need to do their part to promote these

universal values. They should be part of the solution and not

part of the problem, as we have unfortunately found to be the

case for certain representatives of all faiths.

Religious leaders should not stir up tensions in the hope

of gaining the approval of their followers at the expense of

human solidarity and mutual understanding. Likewise, the

media, the universities and civic organizations have their

roles to play in fostering these shared human values. Political

leaders also should do their part. They should find ways to

alleviate poverty and oppression whenever they are found.

They should look for solutions to the issues of our time, even

if they can only achieve partial solutions and partial justice.

Military means to solve these problems are unethical and

they do not work. To conclude, I wish to draw attention to

three objectives that we, as Muslim scholars, need to focus

on. We need to:

• Present convincing lessons on these values to the people of

the West, specifically to the Muslims living there, that will

prevent them from ever committing acts of violence or terror

• Address the responsible agencies in the West to assure

the Muslims their cultural rights, so that they can be a

positive element in society whose particular identity does

not contradict European society in any essential way

• Invite the people of the West to take another look at their

relations with the Muslim world in light of these values so

that together we establish a world in which we all coexist

to the benefit of us all. This is the way that is most ethical,

most intelligent and most rewarding.

gree

iffer