Declaration on “Protecting Worshippers and Houses of Worship”
20211108The tragic accounts of the loss of life, the continued attacks on houses of worship, and the bloodshed of worshippers prompt us, as a group of religious leaders, scholars, and thinkers that share the ethical commitment and humanitarian obligation towards others, to call on individuals and organisations to carry out their human, ethical, and religious duty to denounce such painful tragedies and crimes.
We recognise that “the world is witnessing a steep rise in xenophobia, racism, and intolerance resorting to the distortion and abuse of religions and faith as a pretext for violence, exclusion, and discrimination.”
The targeting of archaeological sites and architectural heritage, including museums, libraries, and manuscripts, is tantamount to the obliteration of the civilisational memory of peoples and the uprooting of their material past.
These erasures go beyond the annihilation of human beings and the destruction of stone; there is, at the core of any such erasure, a fear of collective memory and a fear of both memory’s representations in conscience, feelings, ideas, and attitudes and its manifestations in books, cultural property, and moral effects.
The attacks on houses of worship, when people are praying in them, are the pinnacle of such barbaric acts. Is it not time to consider the question of freedom of worship as an integral part of the right to life and the value of human heritage in relation to culture and identity?