RNA – At the beginning of the meeting, Ayatollah Ali-Reza Arafi, the head of the Iranian Islamic Seminaries welcomed Pierre-Louis Lions, a French mathematician, to al-Mustafa International University and said, “Humankind is in need of religious teachings, that is able to increase interaction and dialogue among people in order for them to reach peace and tranquility in life.”
Ayatollah Arafi further said that the Islamic Seminary of Qom educational system is capable of promoting deep religious interactions with other religions and added, “Before the spread of recent terrorist groups in the world, we held numerous meetings with Western political and scientific figures and in those meetings we always warned that the West had begun interacting with certain Islamic groups which adhere to violent Takfiri ideologies.”
Speaking of Iran as one of the most influential scientific hubs in the world, Ayatollah Arafi asserted, “There are different scientific and philosophical departments in Iranian academic centers which are currently active and publish a variety of journals on science and philosophy, they also review different global philosophical theories in an academic sense.”
At the end of the meeting, Ayatollah Arafi expressed the Islamic Seminary of Qom readiness to attend in any form of joint dialogue, scientific research as well as meetings with Western universities including Sorbonne.
He further added, “The sad events which recently took place in Paris and other Western countries revealed the brutal nature of the ideology of the Wahhabis and their allies’. We really hope such incidents cause the West to rethink their attitude towards the Islamic world. Qom, is a city rich in generating ideas and theories by its great scholars, promoting the interactions of global scientific organizations with scholars in Qom will lead to many developments.”
It must be noted that, Dr. Lions of France also expressed his happiness for visiting Qom and al-Mustafa International University in order to discuss common grounds and signed a Memorandum of Cooperation with al-Mustafa International University.
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