Fri 16 June 2023:
In New York, the United Nations Security Council heard pleas for peace from Pope Francis and a prominent Sunni imam. The topic of “human fraternity” was discussed.
The pope, who is resting in the hospital from abdominal surgery, sent a statement to the UN gathering on Wednesday in which he said that a third world war is being fought “piecemeal” and that mankind is experiencing a “famine of fraternity”.
In a virtual briefing to the UN council, Sheikh Ahmed al-Tayeb, the grand imam of Al-Azhar, the 1,000-year-old center of Sunni learning in Cairo, stated that human unity was the key to world peace, a point he and the pope had expressed in a joint document released in 2019.
“In our own day, with nuclear weapons and those of mass destruction, the battlefield has become practically unlimited, and the effects potentially catastrophic,” the pope said in his statement, which was read by Archbishop Paul Richard Gallagher, the Vatican’s secretary for relations with states and international organisations.
“The time has come to say an emphatic “no” to war, to state that wars are not just, but only peace is just,” the pontiff added in the statement.
Al-Tayeb said his intention in speaking to the council was to urge an end to senseless wars. He cited Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya and Yemen.
HE Grand Imam of Al-Azhar @alimamaltayeb emphasized the importance of reviving the culture of dialogue between religions and consolidating the principles of peace and peaceful coexistence at the #UAExUNSC signature event.
"We are compelled in the face of these crises to… pic.twitter.com/e3fBdPbayR
— UAE Mission to the UN (@UAEMissionToUN) June 14, 2023
The grand imam also called on the council to recognise an independent Palestinian state after 75 years.
Without naming either Russia or Ukraine, the grand imam said the war unfolding on the eastern borders of Europe had instilled terror and “concern that it may regress humanity to a primitive era”.
“Our gathering today is not a luxury but a necessity, dictated by concern for the future of humanity,” al-Tayeb said.
The grand imam said the mission pursued by Al-Azhar and the Roman Catholic Church in the 2019 document on human fraternity for world peace must be pursued by political leaders.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called the declaration by the pope and the grand imam “a model for compassion and human solidarity” and urged countries and people everywhere “to stand together as one human family” and forge “an alliance of peace, rooted in the values of human fraternity”.
After the appeals by the pope and grand imam and council speeches, members adopted a resolution recognising that hate speech, racism, xenophobia, intolerance, gender discrimination and acts of extremism “can contribute to driving the outbreak, escalation and recurrence of conflict”.
The resolution, co-sponsored by the UAE and the United Kingdom, was adopted unanimously even though some of the council’s 15 members have been accused of some of the same actions they condemned.
SOURCE: INDEPENDENT PRESS AND NEWS AGENCIES
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