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Syria’s Grand Mufti suggests holding religious summit in Moscow to promote peace

Grand Mufti Sheik Ahmad Badr Eddin Hassoun offered to unite all the major confessions there

DAMASCUS, January 16. /TASS/. Syria's Grand Mufti Sheik Ahmad Badr Eddin Hassoun has asked Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, to hold a religious summit in Moscow to promote peace.

"I suggested to His Holiness Patriarch Kirill that Moscow should host a religious summit to bring together leaders of all confessions, both Muslim and Christian. Let Jewish and Buddhist [representatives] attend it too," the Syrian Grand Mufti said on Wednesday at a meeting with the Russian delegation headed by Dmitry Sablin, a deputy of the State Duma (the lower house of Russia’s parliament) and co-chair of the working group implementing the agreement between Russia’s United Russia party and Syria’s Baath Party.

"It would be wonderful if [Russia’s President] Vladimir Putin delivered a speech," he said. "We would like the summit to be held under the motto ‘Religion is a matter of peace, not of war or destruction’," he continued. "It could help separate the notion of ‘faith’ from the notion of ‘weapons’."

"It would be wonderful if religious activists said in their addresses to the conference that their messages are messages of peace," Grand Mufti Sheik Ahmad Badr Eddin Hassoun concluded.

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Syria Patriarch Kirill

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