World and traditional religions forum

Alexei Vlasov. Exclusively to VK

The fourth Forum of leaders of world and traditional religions will take place in Astana on May 30-31, 2012. More than 70 delegations from 45 countries will come to Kazakhstan’s capital. Participants of the Forum are not only religious leaders, but also major social activists and prominent politicians. Mrs. President of Azerbaijan, Mekhriban Aliyeva, is among them.

The interest to the conference is not accidental, because in several years the Forum has become one of the most important dialogue platforms for discussion of global inter-confessional problems.

Nine years have passed since participants of the first Forum signed the final declaration, which is still acute: “Promotion of such values as tolerance, truth, justice, and love should be an aim of any religious sermon. Extremism, terrorism, and other violence in favor of religion have nothing in common with true religious understanding and are a threat to human life. They should be rejected.”

The topic of this year discussion of “Peace and agreement as humanity’s choice.” The situation in global politics and economy demands searching for firmer fundament of stable development than only a strategy of economic success of the elite. The modern world feels deficit of values; the growth of xenophobia and nationalism, especially among young people, is observed. That is why it is hard to overestimate the spiritual role of religion in achievement of stable development.

It is not accidental that one of the topics for discussion is religion and young people. This panel will discuss a moral choice in the context of current social processes in the youth space. If experts more and more speak about the generations’ conflict, we should understand how to solve the problem of transferring positive values from elders to youth, how to preserve and promote striving of young people to high spiritual ideals. At the same time, the problem of combining various forms of social protest with radical sectary groups, which use interpretation of faith and religion for fulfillment of their tasks which are far away from peace and agreement.

The initiators of the Forum keep up with times. The deep and well-considered agenda of discussions enable us to expect not only effective views’ exchange, but also development of practical decisions to prevent negative tendencies in the sphere of spiritual values of young people.