KUCHING, Nov 30, 2014: Malaysian Opposition leader Anwar
Ibrahim said Umno leaders should take the cue from Pope Prancis's visit to the
Muslim-majority Turkey on religious tolerance and understandings.
"The visit by Pope Francis gives new to religious
tolerance and understandings between Muslims and Christians, and heralds a new chapter between to the two
civilisations," he said at press conference after meeting State PKR leaders
here today.
He said the meeting and spirit of cooperation between the
pope and the Istanbul Mufti Rahmi Yaran had direct relevant to the Umno general
assembly where racial and religious
intolerances had become the "new narratives among those in power as
opposed to our narratives that call for peace and tolerances."
Picture: Pope Francis (L) is escorted by Mufti Rahmi Yaran upon
their arrival inside the Sultan Ahmed Mosque
Pope Francis on Saturday stood alongside a top Islamic cleric in a
moment of highly-symbolic contemplation at an Ottoman mosque, as he visited
Istanbul on his first trip to the former capital of the Christian Byzantine
world.
On the second day of his visit to overwhelmingly Muslim
but officially secular Turkey, Francis toured key religious and historical
sites in the city once known as Constantinople that was conquered by the
Ottoman army in 1453.
The visit of the pope is seen as a crucial test of
Francis's ability to build bridges between faiths amid the rampage by Islamic
State (IS) militants in Iraq and Syria and concerns over the persecution of
Christian minorities in the Middle East.
The centrepiece of his morning tour was a closely
scrutinised visit to the great Sultan Ahmet mosque - known abroad as the Blue
Mosque and one of the great masterpieces of Ottoman architecture.
The pope paused for two minutes and clasped his hands in
reflection, a gesture remarkably similar to that of his predecessor Benedict
XVI who visited the mosque on the last papal visit to Turkey in 2006.
The pope closed his eyes, clasped his hands in front of
his chest beneath the cross he wears around his neck and bowed his head, as he
stood next to Istanbul Mufti Rahmi Yaran who performed an Islamic prayer known
as the dua.
Like Francis, Benedict had turned towards Mecca in what
many saw as a stunning gesture of reconciliation between Islam and
Christianity.
A Vatican official described Francis's gesture as a
"silent adoration", using a term for religious reverence, making
clear he did not perform a prayer. "It was a beautiful moment of
inter-religious dialogue," added Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi.
He described the atmosphere as more "cordial and
serene" than during Benedict's visit, which was shadowed by remarks he had
previously made deemed to be anti-Islamic. "It begins to be normal that a
pope comes into a mosque," Lombardi said.
After talks with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan
in Ankara on Friday, the pope called for dialogue between faiths to end the
Islamist extremism plaguing the Middle East.
Francis also toured the Hagia Sophia, the great Byzantine
church that was turned into a mosque after the conquest of Constantinople but
then became a secular museum for all in modern day Turkey.
Turkey's own Christian community is tiny - just 80,000 in
a country of some 75 million Muslims - but also extremely mixed, consisting of
Armenians, Orthodox, Franco-Levantines, Syriac Orthodox and Chaldeans. Of these
only the small Franco-Levantine and Chaldean communities regard the pope as the
head of their churches.
Papal visits to Turkey are still a rarity - Francis is
the just the fourth pope to visit the country after Benedict in 2006, John Paul
II in 1979 and Paul VI in 1967
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