Tuesday, May 21 2019 13:59

ArmInfo. Catholicos of All Armenians, Karekin II, at the invitation of the general chairman of the State Information Council, Sharjah Sheikh Sultan Bin Ahmed Al Qasimi, left for Sharjah to attend a religious meeting of the Council, organized  in connection with the proclamation of 2019 Year of Tolerance in the  United Arab Emirates.

During his visit, Karekin II and the ruler of the emirate, Sheikh Dr.  Sultan bin Muhammad Al-Qasimi, held a meeting.

The Catholicos of All Armenians expressed satisfaction and gratitude  to Sheikh Al Qasimi for the invitation, and also noted the importance  of the steps taken by the government of Sharjah in the direction of  tolerance and peaceful coexistence, preservation and restoration of  religious and cultural values.

At the May 20 meeting, Karekin II delivered a report at the Al-Majaz  Amphitheater, presenting a perception of tolerance and peaceful  coexistence based on Christian doctrine and spiritual and national  experience of the Armenian people.

In the report, Karekin II spoke about Christian thinking, which was  determined by ideological perception, based on unity, freedom and  love for the Almighty.

The Catholicos of all Armenians also spoke about tolerance, which to  this day seems to be a manifestation of combining universal efforts  and cooperation in front of human problems, while retaining all the  features that nations and peoples are endowed with.

<The times have changed, and will change, knowledge and human  abilities will constantly grow, but the need for the spiritual and  moral source of tolerance to prevail in the public consciousness will  always be relevant.

In his speech, Karekin II emphasized that along with the indisputable  achievements of mankind towards strengthening tolerance, mutual  understanding and cooperation, in the 21st century, our societies  face new challenges, highlighting the dangerous tendency to present  conflicts and differences in religious light.

In this regard, the Catholicos noted the importance of the imperative  on the platforms of international, interreligious and intercultural  dialogue, the correct interpretation and presentation of tolerance in  education, the media. <Due to the lack of tolerance and its  discriminatory manifestations in the history of mankind, tragedies,  wars and genocides occurred, and today we often witness racial,  religious and cultural crimes. In the course of its history, the  Armenian people repeatedly encountered the most diverse  manifestations of intolerance, the most terrible of which was the  Armenian Genocide, carried out in the early 20th century in the  Ottoman Empire, which was also accompanied by cultural genocide.   According to the same policy, at the end of the 20th century, when  the Armenian people, having established independence on their  historical land of Karabakh, proclaimed their right to a free life,  mass deportations and pogroms of Armenians were carried out by  Azerbaijan. The consequence of intolerance and hatred was also the  destruction of thousands of khachkars and the unique values of  Armenian Christian culture on the territory of the Nakhichevan  Autonomous Republic, and today innocent lives are being killed in  border clashes, "said Karekin II. He also touched upon international  efforts aimed at restoring lasting peace, creating an atmosphere of  mutual understanding and tolerance between nations, the work of the  OSCE Minsk Group, meetings of spiritual leaders with the mediation  efforts of the Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia.

During his speech, the Catholicos also confirmed that the  centuries-old bilateral relations of the Armenian and Arab peoples  are rich in honest manifestations of tolerance and fraternity.