Religion & Society

The Marrakesh Declaration , ignored by the mainstream media, has been acclaimed as a new dawn by some commentators: as promising an era of tolerance and pluralistic harmony in the Muslim-majority regions, where religious minorities have suffered so much for so long. With so much bad news coming from the Muslim world, new voices of hope are bound to receive a warm welcome. Between 25–27 January, around 300 dignitaries gathered in the Moroccan city of Marrakesh under the auspices of King Mohammed VI of Morocco. This event represented the culmination of four years of planning, led by Sheikh Abdallah Bin Bayyah of Abu Dhabi, President of the Forum for Promoting Peace in Muslim Societies. The conference title was ‘The Rights of Religious Minorities in Predominantly Muslim Majority Communities: Legal Framework and a Call to Action’. As the name suggests, its specific goal was to address the discrimination and persecution experienced by religious minorities living under Islamic major...

The Australian city of Melbourne and its new Convention Centre played host last December to the Parliament of the World’s Religions (PWR), arguably the world’s pre-eminent interfaith event. The PWR was birthed in Chicago in 1893 but remained in a state of limbo for a century until being revived in 1993, with subsequent meetings held in 1999, 2004, and, most recently, December 3–9, 2009. The full text of this article was published in "Touchstone: A Journal of Mere Christianity" 23/2 (March/April 2010), pp47-48