CAIRO: Muslim Brotherhood MP Alam El-Din El-Sakhawy condemned Al-Azhar’s Grand Sheikh Mohamed Sayed Tantawi’s decision to participate in an inter-religious conference in Kazakhstan next month.
In a press statement, El-Sakhawy, member of the religious committee at the People’s Assembly, explained that he is against Tantawi’s decision because Israeli rabbis will participate in the conference.
“There is no objection to having dialogue with others but what is happening now with the Zionist occupation of Palestine and hearing [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu’s recent statements makes us [Arabs] refuse to be in the same place as them, he said in the statement.
During a four-day visit to Israel last March, the Chairman of Kazakhstan’s parliamentary Committee on International Relations, Defense and Security, Kuanysh Sultanov, extended an invitation to Israel’s two chief rabbis to participate in the third conference of “World Leaders of Traditional Religions.
In addition, the president of Kazakhstan has invited Israeli President Shimon Peres to be the keynote speaker at the conference as he will be on a visit to the country at the same time. It will be the first state visit of a senior Israeli official since the establishment of diplomatic relations between Israel and the Muslim state, according to the official website of Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
The inter-religious conference in Kazakhstan has been held annually for the past two years, with the participation of hundreds of Muslim and Christian leaders and religious figures from the Middle East and around the world.
