By MD RASOOLDEEN | ARAB NEWS

RIYADH: The Shoura Council approved a draft proposal on Monday to set up the King Abdullah Bin Abdulaziz International Center for Interreligious and Intercultural Dialogue in Vienna.

The approval was given at the eighth regular session of the council chaired by Abdullah Al-Asheikh on Monday.

Shoura Council Secretary-General Muhammed Al-Ghamdi said the paper, which was presented by the council’s committee on foreign affairs, was passed in the house with a majority of votes. The proposal contained 19 articles that outlined the aims, objectives and activities of the proposed center.

He said the house felt dialogue was the best way to resolve international issues through peaceful means. Proper understanding among all religious faiths could bring the people together for a common cause. Such a center will be a global platform for people to understand one another, he added. The Kingdom, he said, would promote this concept at all international and regional forums in the future.

He said the idea would be put forward by the Kingdom to the parliamentary heads of the G20 nations when they meet in Riyadh on Friday to discuss a range of regional and international issues within the framework of a parliamentary consultation process started by the G20 member nations in Canada in 2010.

The center will bring world religions under one roof and hopes to foster peace through dialogue. It is to be located at Schottenring in the heart of the Austrian capital and due to open its doors in mid-2012.

The center is an international legal entity, empowered to conclude agreements and take whatever decisions it sees important for carrying out its tasks and message.

The approved proposal defines the goals of the center, which include supporting dialogue between the followers of religions and cultures, to enhance dialogue, respect and cooperation between nations, to encourage peace, justice and reconciliation, and to counter justification for violence and conflicts under religious cover. It also defines the financing mechanism needed for running the center’s activities.

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Note by the editor: It is a bit ‘amusing’ that Saudi Arabia is setting up a Center for Dialogue when inside Saudi Arabia for instance Christians get arrested for holding a religious ceremony in the privacy of their homes. Still, it is a positive step. The Center is being set up in Austria. May be its activities will influence the situation even inside Saudi Arabia positively. The Ahmadiyya Muslim Community should also ‘challenge’ the Center and bring up our own grievances with various Governments of the member states of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation States (OIC), such as: Pakistan, Indonesia, Malaysia and of course Saudi Arabia.