Qatar firmly rejects all forms of violence & extremism: FM

Foreign Minister HE Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani has reiterated Qatar's firm rejection of all forms of violence and extremism and its support to international efforts to eradicate this phenomenon.

The Foreign Minister made these remarks during the High Level Thematic Conversation on Children and Youth Affected by Violent Extremism held at the UN headquarters.

He said Qatar believes extremism poses a serious challenge to all societies, with youths and children paying a hefty price for it.

Sheikh Mohammed said confronting this global challenge requires a collective commitment and long-term strategy to deal with the circumstances leading to it before they are exploited by terrorist organisations. The particular circumstances of each environment in which extremism arises should also be taken into account.

He said extremism is not the outcome of a particular religion but rather results from social, economic and political distortion that produce groups that interpret religion in such a way and handle terrorism as a religious matter in order to achieve special goals. These goals do not serve, but rather undermine, the efforts of the international community in fighting this phenomenon.

He reaffirmed Qatar's rejection of any attempt to single out a religion or race and accuse it of promoting violent extremism and terrorism.

He noted that attempting to exploit individual incidents of violence in order to link extremism to a particular religion foils efforts to address the real reasons behind extremism, adding that abusing religious symbols constitutes a pretext for extremists to recruit more supporters of their ideology.

He underlined the role of religious figures who preach tolerance and humanitarian values as well as the role of civil society organisations and intellectuals in spreading a spirit of forgiveness and tolerance, and searching for compromises rather than imposing opinions on others.

Courtesy: Qatar-tribune.com