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TRIPOLI, November 25 (Mercy for Mankind) – In this
Interview with Ibrahim Al-Rabo, the Secretary of the International
Organizations and Conferences Office in the World Council of Islamic
Call (WCIC), the deliberations that preceded the convening of the
7th general conference of the World Islamic Call Society, in
addition to the surrounding turbulent circumstances worldwide,
figured high on the agenda of this interview.
The conference takes place in Tripoli during the period of November
26-29.
The seventh general assembly of the WCIC convenes in the midst of a
new critical point, which imposed itself on the reality of the
Ummah. Observers have unanimously agreed that these events
constitute a new important phase in our modern and contemporary
history.
Therefore, the WCIC has chosen for its seventh general assembly the
words of Qur’an: “We have not sent you forth but a mercy for
mankind” as its slogan. This has raised man questions related to the
conference, the relevance of the slogan to the current events, the
role expected of the WCIC, and its vision of future da`wah activity
in general.
To find the answers to all these questions we interviewed Mr.
Ibrahim Al-Rabo, the Secretary of the International Organizations
and Conferences Office in the council, for him to further explain
the vision of the council, its stance on the various issues and to
tell us more about the nature of the conference and the role it
plays.
Q: What is the significance of the seventh conference of the world
council?
A: The conference comes at the beginning of a new phase for the
WCIC, Which has its foundation based on Islamic beliefs and
principles. The assembly takes in account all the new variables
related to cultural works, as well as objective supervision and
evaluation of the work of the council for over three decade.
The conference does not only evaluate the past four years of
council's work but all its past three decades. By that, we try to
recognize our success and failures alike, along with the reasons
behind both. The conference comes at a very serious timing where all
sorts of pressures are being practiced on da`wah works in general
and on charity activities in particular. In addition to that, there
is the deliberate confusion between "terrorism", which we all
condemn in every shape and form for its obvious contradiction with
our principles and precepts, and Islam. There has been a lot of
deliberately created "gray areas" to mix fighting terrorism with
fighting the rights of nations to defend its freedom, its social and
cultural identity, in addition to its freedom of political
determination.
The seventh assembly is the first of its kind to be held after the
events of 9/11, and its negative aftermath on international
relations, Islam and especially on Muslims.
Q: What is the difference between last year’s meetings of the WCIC
and this year’s general assembly?
A: The general assembly is held every four years. It is considered
as the main administrative body for the Council. The assembly
usually draws its agenda for the next four years for the activities
of the council and, at the same time, evaluates the past ones.
The general assembly also performs an important role in choosing the
36 members of the board of the WCIC. The role of the assembly
emanating from the WCIC is to put the annual executive plan, which
is supervised by the executive committee of the WSIS, a committee
made up of five members of the board that meets every three months.
Q: We have talked about the general assembly and the executive
committee. Who are the members of the WCIC?
A: The general assembly is made of Islamic organizations and
institutions from all over the world. This and makes up over 90% of
the conference membership the rest are Islamic independent
individuals.
Q: What is the mechanism for decision-making in the general
assembly?
The general assembly relies on consultation from its members. Six
month before the convening of the conference, we start a dialogue
with the members and asking them to tell us of their vision on the
various issues on the agenda of the general conference.
Q: Could you please tell us about the issues on the seventh general
conference’s agenda?
A: First, we are going to discuss what has been accomplished in the
general assembly during the past four years. On the intellectual
level, several important papers will be discussed such as the
imperative of mercy in Islam, the world da`wah, Sufism as a
counter-force against fanatical movements, in addition to evaluating
the intellectual effect of the world council for Islamic da`wah.
Conference’s Slogan
Q: If the seventh general assembly can be described as an
administrative working tool, then where does its motto fit?
A: Based on what we have said earlier, the council has chosen the
motto “Mercy for Mankind” because Islam is a mercy, not only for
Muslims but also for all mankind. The slogan could not have come at
a better time, a time when the Muslims are accused of isolation, of
encouraging violence and terrorism. We chose Qur’anic slogan as the
best expression against all these misunderstandings.
The second component in the motto is universality, Islam is a
universal message meant for all mankind, it preaches justice,
goodness and equality for all. We will discuss in the conference
both perspectives, that of mercy and that of universality.
Q: This slogan could be understood as a confession that there is
some validity of the accusations of violence against Muslims and
violence being the main principle in Muslim thought?
A: The Muslim Ummah for the past 200 years was always put on the
defensive because its enemies know quite well if we were to take the
initiative we will unite and become a world force to be reckoned
with.
This knowledge made our enemies adamant in their position of not
giving this Ummah a chance to play its rightful role.
Q: You are talking about the concept of mercy and the rebuttal of
accusations within an Islamic conference. What is the use of that
when your audience is Muslim and not the ‘Other’?
A: This is partly true; most of the Islamic conferences are limited
to Muslims, except this one. We have among the participants many
non-Muslim guests. We were keen to have them with us in order to
hear what they have to say and the stances they take. Among our
guests; a delegation from the Vatican, international organizations,
interfaith dialogue organizations, delegates from the United Nations
High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) in addition to scholars
specialized in interfaith dialogue with different non-Islamic stream
of thinking.
Our motto asserts that we are a da`wah-based organization. We do not
have a hidden agenda. We present the Islam, moderate as it is,
without extremism.
We hope that Muslims will benefit from all these international
conferences. We encourage them to participate with us in our
cultural programs, to confirm that Muslims do not belong to an
exclusionist Islamic culture; on the contrary, Islam is a global
humane culture, Islam is a culture and a civilization that belongs
to all humanity.
Violence, Passivity
Q: How can we take the mercy you are talking about from a discourse
discussed in conference halls and turn it into an effective reality
in Muslim discourse?
A: Terrorism does not have a nationality, and does not belong to
this century, only. It has accompanied man since the beginning of
creation. There are some elements, which contributed to the
promotion of violence, due to the support given by international
forces to oppression, fostering the policies of absolute dominance
over the Arabs and Muslims political freedom of choice. These
policies gave the proponents of violence legitimacy to fight
oppression.
Despite our recognition of oppression, and wrongdoing we cannot
sanction the idea that repression can only be solved by repression,
and, hence, we should not fight terrorism by terrorism. Through the
work of this conference, we assert our opposition to terrorism and
violence; we encourage our society to study the reasons for this
phenomenon; we believe that wars were flared using the pretext of
terrorism, and it will not achieve its intended goal of ending
terrorism, unless the international community collectively decides
to go into for the real reasons behind terrorism.
In reality, the Muslims suffer from a case of passivity; they are
the majority, really. It is only just small groups who call for
violence, and they represent neither the Islamic majority nor the
majority working for the Islamic cause.
It is obvious that the reason behind the passivity of the Muslims is
due to the lack of democracy. Islamic institutions are called upon
to practice the art of consultation, helping the citizen to express
his opinion. I think the conference is accomplishing this goal by
adopting a system of dialogue. The members of the organizations
participating in the conference will discuss the agenda in their
regions and will submit their recommendations; as a result, a wide
range of opinions coming from all over the world will be
entertained.
Q. There are many positive examples, and the West is well aware of
them, but they choose to ignore them and insist on highlighting the
violence. What do you think?
Our problem in the Islamic world is the absence of a strong
effective Islamic media, capable in shaping world opinion, or at
least to correct wrong assumptions. Our philosophy in the council is
not to encourage people to adopt Islam as much as to present Islam
in a proper way, because if the world gets to know the right Islam,
Islam alone is capable of promoting itself.
We live in a time when media plays a detrimental role against Islam.
This media influences the decision making of world powers. Through
this media we try to inform them that what comes through is a
blemished image of Islam torn between a moderate Islam without means
and a media promoting examples of violence.
Q. In your capacity as the representative of the world council to
the international institution, how does the “other” see the Muslims?
If you do not take care and manage your own affairs, do not expect
others to do that for you. Therefore, since the middle of the
eighties, we insisted on having a place and I can say we have to a
certain extent succeeded. The world council is the only Islamic
organization with representation in the UNESCO and has on-going
important projects with it, such as the publishing of an
encyclopedia about Islam, which will be written by Muslims and
published by an international organization.
We have also cooperated with the UNICEF in lending a hand with their
medical and relief projects.
In the domain of belief, we have organized six meetings with the
Vatican.
Despite all this, we still have not benefited enough of the
international exposure due to our absence or the representation of
Islam by unqualified people.
Interaction With International Institution
Q. What are the different mechanisms adopted by the council to
interact with the international organizations to correct the
erroneous concepts about Islam? Moreover, what are your plans?
The world council has limited resources and in order to benefit from
the international institutions one needs an Islamic effort and a
common strategy. Alone, the council cannot succeed even if it
possesses all the elements of success.
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