Syrian Arab News Agency S A N A
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Beirut, SANA-Syria is participating in an international conference on ““Religious and Political Values” that kicked off in the Lebanese capital Beirut on Friday.
The conference, which is organized by Adyan (faiths) Foundation and the Lebanese American University, discusses a variety of issues, chiefly political and religious values and their contemporary challenges, and the relation between politics and religion.
Cardinal Mar Beshara Boutros al-Rai, Maronite Patriarch of Antioch and All East, stressed in a speech that bishop Boulos Rohana delivered on his behalf the importance of “mutual respect and cooperation” between politics and religion.
“Both politics and religion are invited to contribute to public welfare so as politics does not use religion, and religion does not burden itself with politics for reaching ends that are, for the most part, at odds with faith,” he added.
“The conference’s topic suggests that political work has values drawn from religion,” he pointed out, adding that politics is a “decent art” because people of power, he saw “are in service of people, which should push them to practice their power according to the ethical system that God decreed.”
Participants said the conference seeks to provide a venue for vitalizing political values in the Islamic and Christian discourse on one side, and enhancing dialogue regarding these values on the other.
Up to 30 researchers and experts in politics, social sciences and religion are taking part in the conference from 17 countries: Syria, Germany, Holland, Spain, Italy, Britain, US, Canada, Argentina, Lebanon, Bahrain, Jordan, Sudan, Iraq, Egypt, Turkey and Mauritania.
Manal Ismael
