The UAE Embassy in Canberra hosted highly respected religious and spiritual leaders from various ethnic and religious backgrounds at an interfaith event to mark World Tolerence Summit on 16th November 2019.
Attendees of the event included different religious leaders representing various faiths, politicians and head of missions. A key focus was promoting co-existence and addressing the problems in todays society that lead to intolerance, injustice and violent extremism.
Speakers at the event emphasised that ignorance of each other’s religion is often the source of conflict, and we must as a collective, work on addressing our ignorance to become a tolerant and peaceful society.
Dean Sahu-Khan President of the ACT Interfaith Forum said “Unfortunately, Religion is used as a source of all animosity and conflict. Tolerance Day is a perfect platform to remove all those misconceptions and ignorance…We need to understand that practicing tolerance and living together in peace is absolutely vital”.
The Embassy is proud to have had the privilege to host this successful event which strongly reflecting on the UAE leaders’ values in line with the 2019 Year of Tolerance proclamation by His Highness Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan, President of the UAE.
His Excellency Abdulla AlSubousi, Ambassador spoke of one of the highlights of the Year of Tolerance. When Pope Francis visited the UAE in February to open the Year of Tolerance. In this historic visit the Pope with Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed signed a Human Fraternity Document for World Peace and Living Together. The idea for the document was conceived from a “profound hope in a bright future for all human beings” and promotes unity to advance a culture of mutual respect.
The Ambassador presented the Human Fraternity Document to Australian Governors and Leaders. This aligns with the key work the Embassy is undertaking to promote a tolerant universal environment of respect for each other’s culture and religious backgrounds, to promote coexistence and to reject any sort of extremism.
The Ambassador said, “I don’t think the UAE would be where it is today without the concept of tolerance”. With 200 nationalities living peacefully and successfully in the UAE, it makes for an amazing example of a tolerant and inclusive society. He further added “we must not just talk about it; we must enshrine it [tolerance]”.
Rabbi Shmueli Feldman Chairman of Chabad ACT spoke of the benefit of the word tolerance “because what tolerance means is, we can be tolerant of each other’s different views, without having to embrace them as our own”. He further added that “coming together with our fellow faith leaders today is a true expression of us getting to that end game of learning how to come together in peace, harmony and mutual respect”.
ACT religious Leaders have released a joint video statement reaffirming the Year of Tolerance and the continued focus on promoting the values of tolerance, dialogue, coexistence and combating violent extremism. Link Here – https://drive.google.com/file/d/1N-YL0EjSx-eBtK2vtqCHFhh0zNKOXVq9/view?usp=sharing
