Do interfaith dialogues work?

It is more and more common to hear of interfaith or interpath dialogues targeted at fighting extremism and to fight violence. There is one major problem with interfaith dialogues, faith. Each belief or religion feels the need to show their superior teaching and inevitably will oppose any other concept. Interfaith dialogue will also only target moderate followers, but up to now, we do not suffer attacks by any moderate group.

If these talks were really honest and sincerely based on improving the situation, they would certainly agree on giving authority to the United Nations to control the outcome. The reality is all the major religions are fighting to keep their spheres of influence inside politics and governments instead of seriously bringing the tensions down.

The hypocrisy goes a step further when the United Nations themselves support the interfaith initiatives giving more political power to religious leaders:

[- On December 2, 2008, Anwarul Karim Chowdhury said:
"Interfaith dialogue is absolutely essential, relevant, and necessary. ... If 2009 is to truly be the Year of Interfaith Cooperation, the U.N. urgently needs to appoint an interfaith representative at a senior level in the Secretariat."

- In 2010, HM King Abdullah II addressed the 65th UN General Assembly and proposed the idea for a ‘World Interfaith Harmony Week’ to further broaden his goals of faith-driven world harmony by extending his call beyond the Muslim and Christian community to include people of all beliefs, those with no set religious beliefs as well. A few weeks later, HRH Prince Ghazi bin Muhammad presented the proposal to the UN General Assembly, where it was adopted unanimously as a UN Observance Event.

- The first week of February, every year, has been declared a UN World Interfaith Harmony Week. The Royal Islamic Strategic Studies Centre released a document which summarizes the key events leading up to the UN resolution as well as documenting some Letters of Support and Events held in honor of the week.

Giving political power to interfaith movements can be compared as asking ISIL to secure Paris. It is not only wrong, but it is purely a stupid move.
If you want peace in between faith, we need to set new rules to cut out the power of those concerned.

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