Mohamed Abdel-Salam, Secretary General of Muslim Council of Elders e dell’Higher Commitee of Human Fraternity, member of the Al-Azhar Center for Interreligious Dialogue, and member of the Executive Office of the Muslim Council of Sages, visiting the village of Rondine met the young people of the Fourth Year High School in Rondine and the World House, with whom he held a meeting and discussion around the theme of dialogue and brotherhood:
Abdel-Salam: “We hope that this place will become more and more a starting point for peace, I am proud to see it and from now on I will also consider this place as my home.”
He was welcomed by a big hug, in the spirit of the interreligious embrace that Rondine Cittadella della Pace has been carrying forward for years, by young people from all over Italy and all over the world, The Judge Mohamed Abdel-Salam, Secretary General of Muslim Council of Elders e dell’Higher Commitee of Human Fraternity, member of the Al-Azhar Center for Interreligious Dialogue and member of the Executive Office of the Muslim Council of Sages who chose to go to Rondine to get to know and encounter a reality in which one has an “integral experience” of relationships and the human being, says Abdel-Salam and in which one feels “a great power, an enormous energy” so much so that “as I look at you I ask myself, ‘What can we do together? What projects are we working hand in hand for humanity?”
It is the shared desire to generate peace projects for all of humanity that accompanies young people and His Excellency Mohamed Abdel-Salam in the discovery of the Rondine’s village, its history up to today, passing through the conflicts faced here and transformed into opportunities.
The meeting became an opportunity for discussion on the value of dialogue and brotherhood as key elements for a future of peace.
It was the President of Rondine Franco Vaccari who introduced the meeting “I am happy that you can speak to young people because Rondine is also a place that wants to speak to young people. We want to bring the possibility of dialogue so that they can become ever more passionate about confronting each other”.
It is precisely on the value of the differences encountered that Abdel-Salam opens his reflection: “I have before me a spectacle of young people who come from different parts of the world, you are the image of the world. The world as Allah, God created it.
It is our ethical, religious and moral duty in this life to think that this diversity was willed. The objective, the purpose, of Allah in wanting this diversity is to be able to get to know each other, collaborate for peace and live together, believers and non-believers” he says after recounting the key moments of his life that led him to approach the religious world.
Up to being part of a unique moment in history: “I was lucky enough to be present at the first meeting between Pope Francis and the great Imam Ahmad al-Tayyib”, which led to the commitment and drafting of the Document on human fraternity. “Here I connect that moment to what is happening here today. The great Imam and Pope Francis managed to overcome differences, clashes, and conflicts, and together they started a project for the future of humanity. This instruction of yours transforms suffering into hope. You are following the same path: bring together young people from both sides of the conflict so that they can get to know each other, dialogue, share “bread and salt together” and then go home to create a peace project”.
A meeting of strong emotional and spiritual value that ends with a joint commitment for the future:
“Perhaps not many in the world know who you are and what you are doing here but from today I will consider myself your ambassador and I will tell what I saw here. Please consider me and consider the Association of which I am Secretary General at your disposal for future joint projects.
You Franco managed to start from suffering to build a climate of peace for a better future, on behalf of the Council of Muslim Sages and on behalf of the Human Fraternity I thank you from the bottom of my heart” concludes the Secretary General of the Higher Commission for Human Fraternity.
The visit ends with an invitation to return to Rondine on the occasion of the Youtopic Fest, the Festival of conflict, which will take place in June, and finally at the Locanda di Rondine with a lunch that gives strength to the new relationship and with the contribution from Franco Vaccari, President and Founder of Rondine Cittadella della Pace, a red swallow symbol of the beginning of a common path towards a peace that can take into account the integral human being, with all its diversity and complexity.
