Bali Conference Promotes Tolerance

I was just reading a very good story online at MSN news and have a link to it below.

There was a conference being held tuesday in Bali, Indonesia, as the world's most populous Muslim nation brought together religious leaders and victims of attacks by Islamic extremists.

A Jewish Holocaust survivor, one Sol Tiechman, 79, was one of those invited to speak at the conference and he made a plea for tolerance. Mr. Tiechman was a teenager living in Czechslovakia, whn his city was first occupied by the Hungarian army and then the Germans. He said that we should try and improve life instead of destroying it. He lost 70 family members to the Nazis including his sister, brothers, and grandparents, who were taken to Auschwitz,Warsaw, Dachau, Kaufering and Landsberg concentration camps before allied forces liberated them in 1945.

One of the goals of this meeting was to counter the conference last December which had been hosted by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, that tried to cast doubt on the killing of an estimated 6 millions Jews during World War II.

The daylong gathering on Bali island was attended by high-profile moderate Indonesian Muslim leaders, including former President Abdurraham Wahid, and Hindu spiritual head Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, as well as Buddhist teachers, a Jesuit priest and rabbis.

Victims of a terrorist attack in Israel and of suicide bombings by Muslim militants on Bali in 2005 were among participants. More than 220 people have died from two attacks in Bali.

Bali is a mostly HIndu city in Indonesia, which also has a Muslim population of some 190 million people, making it the largest Muslim nation in the world. The government is secular and people are mostly moderate, though there is a vocal militant minority that has grown in recent years.

I had several emplolyees who are from Indonesia and they are some of the nicest, calmest people considering all of the natural disaster's that have hit their nation. If there is going to be a New World Order, I would support allowing Indonesia to run it. Their peaceful ways would inspire us all to be better people.

Please take a look at the story and know that in a world where radical Muslims get most of the press, that there is a group of genuine moderates out there and we can only hope that their strain of Islam will be the winning one.

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