Morocco summit pushes Muslim clerics to improve the lot of religious minorities

[Valin]

Religious News Service :

Aida Alami

January 27, 2016

 

MARRAKESH, Morocco (RNS) After the Prophet Muhammad established the first Muslim state, he wrote the Charter of Medina to make sure his subjects lived in harmony, whether they were Muslims, Jews or people of other faiths.

 

Nearly 1,400 years later, hundreds of religious scholars met in Marrakesh in a bid to revive the charter to protect religious minorities in Muslim communities today.

 

The scholars recognize a worldwide crisis: The so-called Islamic State is killing Christians, Yazidis and others and imposing its harsh orthodoxy on millions in Iraq, Syria and elsewhere in the Middle East and North Africa. Tensions between Sunni and Shiite leaders throughout the region are escalating, too.

 

Sponsored by Moroccan King Mohammed VI and the United Arab Emirates-based Forum for Promoting Peace in Muslim Societies, the Jan. 25-27 conference included 300 prominent Islamic clerics and experts from Morocco to Indonesia.

 

Participants called for more tolerance for minorities and unveiled the Marrakesh Declaration, an updated bill of rights for religious minorities, inspired by the Charter of Medina.

 

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[Valin]

Another view

History suggests Marrakesh Declaration no guarantee of religious freedom (COMMENTARY)
Ayman S. Ibrahim 
February 1 2016

In the Arab world, where I was born, we have many self-critical sayings. One of them goes like this: We, Arabs, are all talk and no action. We are swift to issue statements of denunciation and condemnation, less good at taking concrete action.

As a Coptic Christian who lived for decades in an Arab majority-Muslim country, I remembered this saying when I read about the Marrakesh Declaration to protect non-Muslim minorities in Muslim-majority communities.

At a Morocco-sponsored summit last week (Jan. 25-27) led by Sheikh Abdallah bin Bayyah, more than 200 Muslim and Christian religious leaders examined a 1,400-year-old Muslim document allegedly issued by Muhammad himself: the Charter of Medina, also known as the Constitution of Medina. This document, according to the summit, provides details for treating non-Muslims and calls for accepting a plural religious state.

The summit called on predominantly Muslim-majority communities to apply Muhammad’s Charter of Medina and grant non-Muslim minorities “freedom of movement, property ownership, mutual solidarity and defense.”

There is no doubt the declaration the summit produced is remarkable. The significant question is: Will it lead to real action? One can only hope it brings real fruits and that religious freedom for minorities will become a reality.

 

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This declaration can do miracles if we, Arabs, do less talking, and begin to really apply religious freedom: no harassment, expulsion or executions of non-Muslim minorities, and freedom to choose one’s faith.

 

This, I pray, will be more than talk.