Shaikha Mouza: Islam 'wrongly blamed for rise in extremism'

[Al-khiyal]

Doha, May 17, 2007: Qatar's First Lady said a lack of role models and ethics is pushing both Arab and American youths towards violence and extremism.

Addressing members of the Los Angeles World Affairs Council in the US on Tuesday, Shaikha Mouza Bint Nasser Al Misnad described the growth of youth violence internationally as a cynical response to the harsh conditions of globalisation that puts profit over people.

She said Islam is cynically used as a banner to justify violence and is not a cause in itself. Calling the prevailing attitude of cynicism "a loss of faith, the very paralysis of human development", she criticised the current climate of distrust.

"We live in times when we have to swallow the bitter pill of hypocrisy called western democracy or else be injected with the poison of extremism".

Shaikha Mouza called for a "war on cynicism", an active campaign to win the hearts and minds of the world's young by engaging them in steering the course of development through "an ethic that values peace over violence and dialogue over the barrel of a gun".

Asked by the audience about how her generation could mobilise youth to fight the crisis of global climate change, she remarked: "We have to mobilise ourselves first".

"In our quest for global development, we have lost sight of the goal of human development for all. We have not provided an ethical order to guide global development and economic gain has become the only objective," she said in a lecture entitled "War on Cynicism: Winning Young Minds".

Islam 'wrongly blamed for rise in extremism'

[Bent_Bladi]

You GO girl!