Challenges to Muslims extend to holy shrines: Aal Al-Bayt confab

By: Sultan Ahmed

AMMAN, Jordan: Aal Al-Bayt (peace be on them) Foundation for Islamic Thought’s three-day conference, aimed at discussing Islam and Democracy at a time when Islam faces growing challenges, concluded here on Monday.

Dozens of Muslim preachers, religious scholars and leaders from around the world attended the 13th conference of the Foundation.

Jordan's Crown Prince Hamzah inaugurated the conference by delivering a speech at the Islamic Aal Al-Bayt (peace be on them) University in Amman on Saturday, August 21.

Hamzah, a half brother of Jordan's King Abdullah II, said the Muslim world was facing pressures and challenges that “extend to every corner of the (Islamic) nation's potential and its sacred shrines.”

He urged reforms in Muslim thinking and criticized Islamic extremism, but he said such fanaticism resulted from injustices and oppression being suffered by Muslims.

Hamzah did not elaborate on the pressures Muslims were facing, saying only that fanaticism was caused by a “deprivation, oppression and absence of justice” that “provokes hatred.”

The extremist Islamic behavior resulting from such pressure is, then, “taken as evidence to convict and blame Muslims on the false assumption that these are characteristics of their morals, principles and even religion,” the 24-year-old prince said.

“But the truth is that Islam and the Muslims reject and condemn these exceptional cases as strange to their true religion and as a form of transgression,” he said.

Hamzah is the president of the board of trustees of the conference host, the Aal Al-Bayt (peace be on them) Foundation for Islamic Thought, which is dedicated to discussing challenges facing Islam.

The Aal Al-Bayt (peace be on them) Foundation is a semi-independent think tank established in 1980 by Hamzah's father, King Hussein, who died five years ago.

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