ASIA/IRAQ - Chaldean Patriarch: "positive signs" from Islam in the fight against religious extremism

Monday, 23 January 2017 extremism   islam   area crisis  

prospectmagazine.com

Baghdad (Agenzia Fides) - The expected defeat of jihadist militants and their campaigns of terror provides the opportunity for a real change of pace in Iraqi politics, which aims to build a democratic State based on the principle of citizenship. To achieve this objective it will be necessary to start a "national reconciliation" process along the lines of the model carried out in South Africa, when the Apartheid system failed. But in the Muslim community "positive signs" of the desire to emancipate itself from extremism conditionings are registered. This is how Chaldean Patriarch Raphael Louis Sako I outlined the crucial historical phase crossed by Iraq, in the intervention he carried out at the conference on the defense of religious freedom, held on Saturday, January 21 in Baghdad by Massarat Foundation.
Among the more recent "positive signs" from Muslim civil authorities and Islamic institutions, the Primate of the Chaldean Church listed a local authority declaration of Najaf, which called upon the Muslims to attend the Christian joy for the feast of Christmas; monitoring stepped up by the Ministry for business and religious facilities in order to identify and combat the preachers who incite sectarian hatred; and also the measures taken by the Ministry for Religious Affairs of the Iraqi Kurdistan Autonomous Region to ban any speech or offensive expression against other faith communities. (GV) (Agenzia Fides 23/01/2017)


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