Saudi Crown Prince calls for Islamic nation to put house in order

Excerpts from report by the Saudi news agency SPA

Tehran, 9th December: ...The following is the text of the speech delivered by the Crown Prince, Deputy Prime Minister and Commander of the National Guard, HRH Prince Abdullah Bin Abd al-Aziz, at the eighth Islamic summit conference...

Our most important obligation at this historic meeting is to review our current situation and problems faithfully and openly, surging from our shaky reality to our future that is full of challenges and opportunities.

Therefore, we must be aware that the way we deal with these challenges and opportunities will have a direct impact on the destiny of our nation and the substance of its future...

An objective view of the reality of our nation, its circumstances and the events that are affecting it, will reveal to us the extent of the depth of the Islamic awakening, which echoes in every spot, mentioning the name of God...

However, this objective view also clearly reveals that our Islamic world is still suffering from a state of fragmentation and division, and these two elements have led to the shedding of the blood of innocent Muslims by others in the name of Islam.

In fact, these are abominable slogans that are far removed from the spirit, fairness and compassion of Islam.

The anti-Islamic conspiracies, plots and intrigues did not stop in the past, nor will they stop now or in the future. However, the time has come to blame ourselves before we point accusing fingers at others.

A healthy and fit body will remain immune to foreign pests however ferocious they may be, but a torn and decaying body will be an easy prey to attacks by enemies and the slyness of malicious people.

Therefore, we must put our Islamic house in order. This must be our imperative and absolute priority in our endeavour to advance our nation and push it along the path of progress and prosperity.

We cannot restore health to our Islamic house unless we absorb the big, clear difference between disputes and differences...

Brothers; our historical duty is to avoid repeating mistakes and the tragedies they lead to, and to open a new page in dealing with one another and in coexistence with others. Relations between Muslims should be based on love, cooperation and giving advice, proceeding from essential points of agreement and not marginal points of differences.

In our contemporary world, external relations of Muslims should be based on peaceful coexistence with all those who want it. We should not seek to make others do what they do not like, and likewise, we should reject attempts by others to make us do what we do not want. Let them have their own creed, and let us have our own creed...

The most important challenge facing our Islamic nation is to overcome its impotence when faced with the task of emulating, and be on a par with the industrially and technologically advanced countries both in the East and the West. This impotence is fundamentally due to the state of division and fragmentation besetting our nation which is torn apart between scores of banners, slogans and politics.

This state of division is at variance with the most obvious and most distinctive feature of this time: small entities cannot have any weight or prestige in the contemporary international community where the effective bodies are the result of the integration and union of smaller entities...

There are no limits for the perspectives of cooperation between Muslims in the field of politics, defence, economy and information. But we must remove obstacles and avoid stumbles in our way towards a shining future.

These obstacles could be summed up in the short-sightedness that is shunned and rejected by Islam, whether such short-sightedness comes from ethnic, regional or ideological considerations...

Source: SPA news agency, Riyad, in Arabic 0756 gmt 9 Dec 97

BBC Monitoring (http://www.monitor.bbc.co.uk), based in Caversham in southern England, selects and translates information from radio, television, press, news agencies and the Internet from 150 countries in more than 70 languages.