The work of the program (Shared Values between Islam and Christianity) was concluded today, which was held by the International Organization of Al-Azhar Graduates, in cooperation with the Franciscan Cultural Center, through the “Ambassadors of Al-Azhar” project. Over two days.
The closing of the program was attended by: Professor Dr. Ibrahim Al-Hodhud, former President of Al-Azhar University, and Scientific Advisor to the International Organization of Al-Azhar Graduates, and Dr. Hamdallah Al-Safti, Director Scientific and Cultural Affairs of the Organization, General Supervisor of the Al-Azhar Ambassadors Project, Father Milad Shehata, Director of the Franciscan Cultural Center, and Dr. Michael Medhat, philosophy teacher at the Faculty of Arts, Helwan University, Dr. Shatha Gamal, professor of tourism and archeology at Helwan University, and a number of monks, public figures, university professors, and students.
Dr. Ibrahim Al-Hodhud said, during the first session of the program: Virtues and morals represent a common denominator among all religions. There is no religion that does not call its followers to moral values. We do not know of a religion that permits forbidden self-killing, lying, or betrayal, or permits injustice and injustice. All religions glorify moral values and warn against aggression. For believers in a heavenly religion, their sources of knowledge are divine revelation, along with sense and reason. The mind is the one that plans everything from the inside, but the law is the one that controls the mind from the outside, so the law is the light.
Dr explained. The hoopoe states that commitment to moral values collides with desires, so the person with desires usually rebels against moral values and transgresses them, because it involves desires that push him to transcend commitment to virtues and values.
And Dr. explained. Michael Medhat, the importance of searching for common values, which is essentially about building strong and sustainable relationships between individuals and societies, so we must work to enhance common values, and achieve understanding and peaceful coexistence in the world.
He explained that common values contribute to strengthening Relationships and building bridges of cooperation, through equality, freedom and morality, as values are a tool for diagnosing some diseases in a particular society, and they are what give meaning to existence and evoke the culture of peoples.
And Dr. concluded. Hamdallah Al-Safti, the program’s host, presented a summary of the crisis of values in contemporary reality, in which he said: The crisis of values in contemporary society is represented by the absence of moral and human values, and this is mostly due to modern education curricula, which focused on tangible things and neglected values, which produced a neutral human being. Concerning social issues, the decisions he takes in the fields of morals, religion, and social and national relations are governed by emotional reactions, racial fanaticism, and psychological complexes.
Al-Safti stressed that the crisis of values in The current reality stems from the lack of purity of the sources of values, from the apparent extremism of educational philosophies in defining the meanings of values, and from the superficiality of general culture, which makes us emphasize the importance of religions as a source of values, as the values taken from religion are absolute and fixed, because they are part of religion.
At the conclusion of the program, certificates of honor were distributed to the participating professors and students.
