It gives us Singaporeans, especially the Muslims of Singapore a great pleasure to welcome and honour all of you, the distinguished participants of the Exploratory Meeting for South-Asia Inter-Religious Consultation for Peace, by inviting you to this dinner. We Singaporeans are greatly honoured by the choice of Singapore as the venue for the exploratory meeting.  I can very proudly say that this choice is a very befitting one because Singapore is a country which 1.3 multi-religious, multi-racial, multi-lingual, multi-cultural and multi-colourful, where there is a living example of unity-in-diversity and peaceful co-existence of the various denominations and races.  In short, Singapore can be seen as a miniature world and a model state for the rest of the world to follow.  Therefore, to hold any meeting for the consultation for peace, Singapore can serve as an ideal venue.  I, therefore, once again welcome you, our honoured guests as messengers of peace to a land of peace.

In this world of today from all directions of the globe a call is being sounded more universally than any other by all leaders irrespective of whether they lead a small community or a big one and whether a small nation or a big one.  And that call is the call for peace.  In no other matter the leaders of the various communities and nations are so uniform in opinion as they are in their call for peace.  Even the individuals and heads of families, too, do not under-estimate the importance of peace.

We know from our experience that the importance of any commendable state or condition will be popularly and universally upheld and welcomed only when a bad state or condition which is its opposite gains ground and its evil effects are widespread and the leaders fail to understand the ways and means of putting it off.  Like-wise, too, nowadays the importance of peace is popularly acclaimed and upheld in all the various nooks and corners of the world.  This alone is sufficient evidence to prove that there is widespread peacelessness and unrest in the world and its ill-effects have increased tremendously. An inference of this type is known as ‘Lisanul Hal’ or the language of the condition.

It will make one laugh if anyone known how the leaders of communities and nations who have understood so clearly the ill-effects of peacelessness and the importance of peace, have begun to understand peace.  Because, those of them who lead a community or nation which commits inhuman injustices to another, think that those who are subjected to such atrocities should not utter any word of protest against their inhuman and merciless atrocities, biases and prejudices, should bear and be patient indefinitely long and should be silent without even making their plaints public.  This is what they consider as peace.  As for the leaders of those who are subjected to such atrocities or injustices, they exaggerate things without any proportion by painting an ant-sized prejudicial act as that of an elephant-sized one, thereby trying to divert world opinion and general sympathy in their favour.  Leaders of these two categories are not at all in possession of the qualities of true leadership.  They are no other than advocates of hypocrisy.

Now one might ask, "What, then, is peace?"  In order to know what is peace and to understand its benefits one should first know what is peacelessness and what are its effects, because things are best understood through their opposites. Therefore, let us first know what is peacelessness, what are its causes and what are its ill-effects.  Peacelessness can be defined as "the internal or external motivation of an individual or a community or a country prompted by dissatisfaction or greed".  Its causes are the dissatisfaction of the less-fortunate and the greed and selfishness of the well-to-do, whether they are individuals, communities or countries. The dissatisfaction of the less-fortunates is caused by the discrimination in power and right and the imbalance in the distribution of wealth.  The ill-effects of peacelessness are retardance of progress, promotion of chaos, decadence of intellectual attainments and loss of lives, wealth and prestige.

Now it is easy for us to know what peace is, what are its causes and what are its benefits. Peace can be defined as the internal or external motivation of an individual, a community or a country prompted by satisfaction and sympathy.  Its causes are the satisfaction of the less-fortunate and the generosity and sympathy of the well-to-do, whether they are individuals, communities or countries. The satisfaction of the less-fortunate is caused by the absence of discrimination in power and right and the balanced distribution of wealth.  The benefits of peace are: acceleration of progress, removal of chaos, promotion of intellectual attainments and safety of lives, wealth and prestige.

Islam is the way of the life we Muslims follow.  The term Islam is derived from the root word "salamah" which means peace or safety.  Therefore, the meaning of the term Islam is "to establish Peace" or "to bring about safety".  Those who are conversant with the philology of the Arabic language will agree with me in this respect. Therefore, it is not correct to translate the word ISLAM as peace, as is done commonly.  From this clarification we can come to know that the religion of Islam is the religion of the establishment of peace or the code of life which establishes peace.  Again the word Islam is itself a quadri-literal root-word which means submission.  When taking into account this second meaning Islam means to submit oneself (to Allah) in order to establish peace.

In order to establish peace we have to strengthen the bases or causes of peace and in order to strengthen the bases or causes of peace we should invariably weaken and remove the bases or causes of peacelessness.  Therefore, to establish peace is no other than the weakening and removal of the causes of peacelessness.

I have already given the causes of peace and peacelessness.  Let us examine them once again. The causes of peace are the satisfaction of the less-fortunate and the generosity and sympathy of the well-to-do whether they are individuals, communities or countries.  And the causes of peacelessness are the dissatisfaction of the less fortunate and the greed and selfishness of the well-to-do whether they are individuals, communities or countries.  The dissatisfaction of the less-fortunate is caused by the discrimination in power and right and the imbalance in the distribution of wealth.  Therefore, if it is desired to establish peace then the grievances and dissatisfactions of the less-fortunate must be done away with.  That is not possible without the removal of the discriminations and imbalances.

Wherever people of different religions, races and cultures live together, there arises a problem of peaceful co-existence.  Likewise too, wherever the Muslims were co-existing with people of various races, religions and cultures, they faced the problem of peaceful co-existence with others.  But fortunately, the religion of the Muslims, i.e. Islam, was not a religion that advocated discrimination on the basis of races, cultures, languages or colours.  Therefore, peaceful co-existence was not so much a problem for the Muslims in any part of the world as long as there was no outside interference.  This truth may be vouched for, by the fact that Muslim communities, even today, live in various parts of the world, completely segregated from the other Muslims of other countries, finding agreement with the people of varying races and religions of their locality or country.  Peaceful co-existence of religions or races  will not be a problem if it is understood that peaceless co-existence is the result of failure of the races and religions to understand what members of other races and religions respect or detest, sanctify or hold in contempt.  Once the races and religions begin to understand what other races and religions respect or detest, sanctify or hold in contempt, the problem of peaceless co-existence will solve itself.  Therefore, to promote the spirit of peaceful co-existence in a country or for that matter in a world of many races and many religions is only possible by educating all the citizens of that country with at least what is respected or what is detested, what is sanctified or what is held in contempt by every religion or race of that country.  This type of education will definitely do away all the normal possibilities of communal, religious or racial clashes or misunderstandings.  I do not suggest that members of one race or religion should respect or detest exactly what other races or religions, respect or detest.  All that I am suggesting is that all the citizens of a multi-racial and multi-religious country should be educated with what every religion or race of the country respect or detest, sanctify or hold in contempt, in order that they know how to avoid the chances of inter-communal, inter-racial and inter-religious clashes.

As for Islam it teaches its followers to respect other religions, for such respect will prompt others to reciprocate it, and as a result there will be good-will and understanding among various religions.

 In order to achieve the objective of peace it is highly imperative to make mankind realize the fact that they are all one brotherhood being descended from one and the same ancestor and on that basis to work tirelessly in achieving justice, equality, freedom and preservation of rights and liberties for the entire mankind.  Without doing this it is a mere waste to talk peace whether it is in the national level, regional level or world level. Therefore, we should make sure that our talks of peace are not going to end as talks alone but they should lead us towards concrete efforts to promote peace for the well-being of all human beings covering all areas and dimensions of peacelessness.

We Singaporeans wish you success in your worthy cause and pray to Allah for guiding us towards success in our common sincere purpose. Amen.