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DAKAR-Leaders at a summit of Islamic states agreed on Friday to work with the West to fight religious bigotry and a U.S. envoy pledged support for a dialogue to avoid "a clash of ignorance".Delegates at the 57-nation Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC) in Dakar, Senegal, said a final communique would focus on the threat of "Islamophobia" facing the world's around 1.5 billion Muslims.But it would recommend cooperation and dialogue with the non-Muslim world to defuse a potential clash of civilizations stoked by Western fears over Islamic terrorism and Muslims' anger at perceived insults against their faith."The Islamic Ummah (community) is moving in a moderate direction and almost on a progressive path, we're all moving in the same path," said Sada Cumber, who was appointed by President George W. Bush last month to be the U.S. envoy to the OIC.Cumber said the risk from religious bigotry and extremism came not so much from a clash of civilizations, as from "a clash of ignorance on the part of Muslims to learn more about America and us, the Americans, to learn more about Islam".Summit delegates said the communique would offer political support for Iraq to help it regain stability, but would not include a specific declaration of backing for Iran, despite an Iranian request-a decision seen as a sign of readiness to foster cooperation, not confrontation, with the West.Negotiations appeared deadlocked, however, on a new charter to give a more active role to the Islamic body, which critics say has failed to back up its words with action in the past.The Dakar summit would also call for greater solidarity and cooperation among OIC members, which include super-rich Arab oil states like Saudi Arabia and Kuwait and some of the poorest states on the planet, most of them in Africa.To read more go to:
As in the days of Noah....
