Senate Speaker: Culture of dialogue and accord is a key to overcoming global challenges
Every nation should bear responsibility for ensuring stability in the world, by promoting a culture of dialogue and harmony. This was announced by Maulen Ashimbayev, Speaker of the Senate of the Kazakh Parliament, head of the Secretariat of the Congress of Leaders of World and Traditional Religions, in an interview with Dinara Satzhan and Adil Seifullin for the Qogam News project, Kazinform News Agency reports.
As Maulen Ashimbayev noted, today the Congress of Leaders of World and Traditional Religions is one of the effective tools through which Kazakhstan contributes to security and stability in the international community.
“The Congress has already proved to be an effective international platform. Kazakhstan has been promoting this initiative for more than 20 years. Our President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, who stood at the origins of this forum, made a great contribution to its formation and development. Today, we can say that the Congress is a universally recognized, recognizable and respected platform. The main spiritual leaders of the modern world come here,” Ashimbayev said.
The VII Congress held in 2022 with the participation of key spiritual leaders of the modern world - Pope Francis (now deceased) and the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar Sheikh Ahmed al-Tayeb, is remembered for its conceptual content and serious composition.
“Much can be said about the contribution of Pope Francis to the promotion of ideas of equality, protection of the rights of vulnerable groups and human rights protection. He raised major issues concerning the relationship between the Islamic and Christian worlds. Pope Francis is the person who made a huge contribution to the rapprochement of the Islamic and Christian worlds. We still remember his arrival at the VII Congress, when he blessed our country and spoke warmly about Kazakhstan as a land of meetings, where people listen to and respect one another in all their diversity. Supreme Grand Imam of Al-Azhar, Sheikh Ahmed al-Tayeb, a key figure in the Sunni Muslim world, also came to the VII Congress. He is an outstanding figure, deeply respected and revered, and his works are widely known. At the Congress, he emphasized the role of dialogue in the modern world. It will be no exaggeration to say that the VII Congress was a unique forum that contributed to dissemination of a mass culture of dialogue, rapprochement of world religions. In this regard, we expect that the VIII Congress will also be very representative and meaningful,” Ashimbayev said.
