Cardinal welcomes Muslim conference’s declaration on religious minorities

January 28, 2016

At the invitation of Morocco’s government, hundreds of Sunni and Shiite scholars from 120 countries gathered in Marrakesh to consider the plight of non-Muslim minorities in largely Muslim nations.

“We in the Kingdom of Morocco will not tolerate the violation of the rights of religious minorities in the name of Islam,” King Mohammed VI stated as the January 25-27 conference began. “I am enabling Christians and Jews to practice their faith and not just as minorities. They even serve in the government.”

Participants in the conference issued the Marrakesh Declaration, which called for “full protection for the rights and liberties to all religious groups in a civilized manner that eschews coercion, bias, and arrogance.”

“Conditions in various parts of the Muslim world have deteriorated dangerously due to the use of violence and armed struggle as a tool for settling conflicts and imposing one's point of view,” the declaration added. “This situation has also weakened the authority of legitimate governments and enabled criminal groups to issue edicts attributed to Islam, but which, in fact, alarmingly distort its fundamental principles and goals in ways that have seriously harmed the population as a whole.”

The declaration also called upon “Muslim educational institutions and authorities to conduct a courageous review of educational curricula that addresses honestly and effectively any material that instigates aggression and extremism, leads to war and chaos, and results in the destruction of our shared societies.”

“It is unconscionable to employ religion for the purpose of aggressing upon the rights of religious minorities in Muslim countries,” the declaration concluded.

Non-Muslims also took part in the conference.

In a speech prepared for the conference, Chaldean Catholic Patriarch Louis Raphael I Sako decried anti-Christian persecution and discrimination in Iraq, according to a Fides report. He also lamented the effects of the 2003 US military intervention in Iraq, stating that “external players who acted according to their own ambitions in the region … have used democracy and freedom as a cover to rob our natural resources, peace and freedom, and they have created chaos and terrorism in Iraq and the Middle East.”

Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, the retired archbishop of Washington, was present in Marrakesh and welcomed the declaration.

“It is truly a great document, one that will influence our times and our history,” the prelate said, according to a Catholic News Service report. “It is a document that our world has been waiting for and a tribute to the Muslim scholars who prepared it,” he added. “As one of the People of the Book, I thank you for this document and I thank the Lord God who has provided his followers the courage to prepare this document.”

 

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Further information:

• Marrakesh Declaration
• Muslim leaders reiterate support for minority rights in Islamic nations (CNS)
• Chaldean Patriarch: the "evil hand" of "external players" has brought chaos in the Middle East (Fides)
• Morocco summit pushes Muslim clerics to improve the lot of religious minorities (RNS)
• Muslim leaders plan summit on protecting non-Muslims in their midst (RNS)