KAICIID Secretary General Faisal Bin Muaammar today spoke at an opening session of the CAUX Forum 2018 in Switzerland. His address was entitled, “Dialogue and rhe Re-humaniztion of the Other – Building walls of fear, or Building Trust?

The Caux Forum, titled “Towards an Inclusive Peace”, is a follow up to the 2017 CAUX Forum, at which the root causes of extremism were discussed from six different perspectives: ethnicity and race, gender, politics, religion, economy, and ecology.

In 2018, Towards an Inclusive Peace takes a step forward and continues to advance the discussion, switching the narrative from discussing the causes of extremism, to how we can participate in finding sustainable solutions to create a better world.

In his remarks, Secretary General Bin Muaammar focused on the importance of equal rights and common citizenship to achieving an inclusive peace:  “Exclusion distorts our lives. Exclusion causes pain… The solution is not found in fear. The solution is creating hope for a better world. The solution is not blaming someone who is different for the world’s troubles. The solution is telling everyone that all people have equal rights and share a common citizenship.”

He addressed the need to defeat fear through transformative dialogue: “If we enter into a respectful dialogue to learn about the other person’s community, culture, history, or religion, we defeat fear through hope,” he said.

The International Dialogue Centre (KAICIID) supports inclusive interreligious dialogue plat  forms, that serve inclusive peace, in four regions where the manipulation of religious identities has led to violent conflict. The five year old Centre has country experts in the Arab region, Nigeria, Myanmar, and the Central African Republic.

Bin Muaammar spoke of the Centre’s experience in these regions: “You won’t be surprised to learn that the conditions for this violence begins with ignorance, exclusion, material and spiritual poverty: a sense of hopelessness and isolation. It begins with the manipulation of religious identity to justify violence in the name of religion, both by politicians and by certain so-called religious leaders.”

He stated that history has taught us that security and equal citizenship protect our dignity. Education builds a tolerant understanding of the “Other” and creates the conditions for an inclusive peace.

The International Dialogue Centre was created to bridge the worlds of the secular policy makers and religious community leaders, including women and youth.

The Secretary General stressed the valuable role of religious leaders and urged participants at the Forum to include interreligious dialogue in providing solutions towards an inclusive peace, he ended his remarks with a call to action: “We must recognize that religion is part of the solution and not the cause of the problem. Religious leaders and interreligious dialogue must form an integral part of the solution finding process to build a future that is respectful, tolerant and inclusive.

The main goal of Towards an Inclusive Peace is to create a space to actively discuss creative, effective and sustainable solutions to address extremisms of all

kinds, by bringing the tools of dialogue, personal reflection, story sharing, narrative transformation and inclusive participation. KAICIID is partnering with the Caux Forum to offer trainings to participants on interreligious dialogue as a tool for peace.