King Abdullah addressing the opening session. (Petra)

By Tareq Delwani, IOL Correspondent

AMMAN, July 5, 2005 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – A conference on how to remove negative stereotypes on Islam worldwide resumed Tuesday, July 5, its sessions in the Jordanian capital Amman.

King Abdullah II opened the three-day conference Monday. Addressing the plenary session of the conference, titled “The True Islam and its Role in Modern Society”, the Jordanian monarch said Muslims around the globe are shouldered with the responsibility of revealing the true essence of moderate and tolerant Islam.

He lashed out extremists harming the image of Islam, urging a unification of the religion's schools of thought to create greater moral clarity, according to Agence France-Presse (AFP).

“Terror acts practiced by some groups and organizations ... do not correspond to the principles and spirit of Islam,” he told up to 170 scholars and intellectuals from the four corners of the universe.

The meeting, organized by the Jordanian ministry of religious affairs, further tackles Islam's stance on extremism, terrorism, reform and human rights.

Status of woman in the Muslim society, the Islamic way of achieving comprehensive development and the contribution of Muslims to the human civilization also top the participants' agenda.

Ferocious Campaign

Abdulaziz Othman Altwaijri, Director General of the Islamic Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (ISESCO), said Islam has been the subject for an unprecedented ferocious and systematic campaign to blemish its image.

He added that the archenemies of Islam have allocated mind-boggling cash to achieve their malicious schemes.

Nihad Awad, Executive Director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), said it is high time that Muslims improved the image of their religion in the eyes of the West particularly after the 9/11 attacks and to prove to the world that Islam is all about love and peace.

Prominent scholar sheikh Yusuf Al-Qaradawi, however, said that injustices done to Muslims by the West are also to blame for the emergence of some extremist groups.

“The Muslim nations, with its 1.3 billion population, or a great religion like Islam can by no means take the entire blame for this,” he told the gathering.

Other Muslim dignitaries also addressed the opening session, including Secretary General of the Organization of Islamic Conference Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu and Egypt’s Mufti Sheikh Ali Goma.

Most of the speakers urged delegates representing the Islamic schools of jurisprudence attending the conference to unify their message and ensure that fatwas, or religious edicts, are not issued haphazardly.

The cancer of Islamophobia has spread across the United States and Europe since the 9/11 attacks.

A recent report released by the International Helsinki Federation for Human Rights (IHF) said Muslim minorities across Europe have been experiencing growing distrust, hostility and discrimination since the 2001 attacks.

The United Nations Commission on Human Rights adopted on April 12 a resolution calling for combating defamation campaigns against Islam and Muslims in the West.