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When the Muslim World League unveiled its “Building Bridges of Understanding and Peace Between East and West” initiative from the UN podium in 2023, it marked a significant shift in interfaith diplomacy — one that deserves renewed attention as global tensions intensify.
The timing could not be more critical. Across the Middle East, dialogue has given way to rising hatred, racism and religious polarization. Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, alongside operations in the West Bank, Lebanon and Syria, has been accompanied by increasingly radical rhetoric from Israeli officials invoking religious texts to mobilize public sentiment. Settler attacks on Palestinians in Jerusalem and the West Bank have followed, creating a dangerous cycle that fuels extremism on both sides and pushes Muslim and Jewish communities toward heightened sectarianism that threatens regional and international stability.
Addressing this religious powder keg requires courage and wisdom from faith leaders. The Muslim World League’s initiative offers precisely such a framework — a values-based roadmap for defusing tensions through what Secretary-General Dr. Mohammed bin Abdulkarim Al-Issa describes as “communication for mutual understanding and cooperation among nations and peoples.” He frames this not as political expediency but as “a divine call present in all heavenly religions,” while insisting that “every civilization possesses its own identity whose right to exist must be respected, however deep our disagreements.”
Al-Issa’s approach reflects a sophisticated understanding that “civilizational partnership among nations and peoples represents an urgent necessity for global peace and domestic social harmony.” By championing civilizational cooperation over conflict, he challenges the intellectual foundations that lead to real-world violence — violence that claims innocent lives, derails development and provides extremists with recruitment material for their destructive agendas.
Our fractured world desperately needs voices that connect faith with responsibility rather than zealotry.
Hassan Al-Mustafa
This perspective breaks decisively with the clash of civilizations narrative that has dominated recent decades. Instead of treating differences as irreconcilable, the initiative positions them as enriching. Rather than allowing religion to be weaponized through narrow political interpretations, it reclaims faith’s unifying ethical core.
The Muslim World League has backed its rhetoric with action, building an expansive global network through conferences and Al-Issa’s diplomatic missions across Europe, the US and East Asia.
In Paris in April, he insisted that authentic Islam advocates understanding over confrontation, cooperation over exclusion. During a June visit to London, he emphasized that Islam finds its truest expression in the moderate discourse of its legitimate institutions. And at Stanford and Duke universities during a major US tour this year, he explored how faith can counter hatred and unleash human creativity.
This message of openness that Al-Issa delivers to Western policymakers, scholars and students resonates equally in Muslim-majority nations. At September’s eighth International Conference of Religious Leaders in Kuala Lumpur, he urged moving beyond abstract sermonizing toward concrete initiatives that build peace and rebuild trust among nations.
These diplomatic efforts reveal a coherent strategy: leveraging what might be called “religious diplomacy,” which merges spiritual authority with institutional power to shape international opinion among politically and intellectually influential actors.
The Muslim World League’s work aligns with ’s Vision 2030 reforms, which have institutionalized practices breaking from rigid fundamentalism and isolationism, making dialogue and cultural engagement central to the Kingdom’s foreign policy.
Our fractured world desperately needs voices that connect faith with responsibility rather than zealotry and that transform religious conviction into a peace dividend rather than a conflict accelerant. The Muslim World League’s initiative provides such a lifeline — but only if governments and influential international bodies actively support it, if the media amplifies its message, and if spiritual leaders and intellectuals across religious and cultural divides embrace it.
No one should mistake this for a silver bullet. The initiative will not deliver utopian universal peace or magically resolve deeply entrenched crises that powerful interests actively perpetuate. But what it does offer is a practical route toward shrinking the space for hatred and reestablishing dialogue as humanity’s best defense against the endless wars that have drained its resources, shattered its communities and imposed burdens that demand urgent relief.
• Hassan Al-Mustafa is a Saudi writer and researcher interested in Islamic movements, the development of religious discourse, and the relationship between Gulf Cooperation Council states and Iran. X: @Halmustafa