The Chairman of the Russian Mufties Council Mufti Sheikh Ravil Gaynutdin addressed to religious leaders of Russia an appeal, which offers to hold a joint festival in February 2011 "All-World Week of Interfaith Harmony" among all religions, faiths and beliefs. The purpose of the event is to mobilize and use the collective power of the second largest global infrastructure, formed by religious institutions (which are more even educational institutions) to promote peace and harmony on earth.

This appeal says that recently, in the second half of October this year, the 65th Session of UN General Assembly adopted an extremely important, in our view, Resolution A/RES/65/5 titled «The World Interfaith Harmony Week» ("All-World Week of Interfaith Harmony ").

By itself, this document reflected the growing understanding of the world community of the universal place of religion in it and its enduring role in the lives of all mankind. However, it also reflected the explicit concern of the current state of interfaith relations at the global level, which was expressed in an unambiguous call for all religions of the world to urgently find ways to inclusive harmonizing relations between them.

The relevance of the UN ideas is particularly evident in relation to our multi-religious country - our common homeland of Russia, still running hard historical stage of transition from a society of militant atheism to the restoration of the main vectors of its long development, always stationed at the high spirituality, which was provided by the tireless educational work of leading traditional faiths of the country.

Despite the fact that over the years our homeland freed as a whole from overwhelming everything and everyone militant atheism and cleared the way for people to God's Temple, it is, nevertheless, far from overcoming one of the worst of the communist legacy which Russia as well as all other States of the former Soviet Union got, such as deep social divisions between nations and faiths. Moreover, we must note that today, we can observe signs of preservation of such division, and sometimes its strengthening.

That is why we accepted the UN call for harmonization of interfaith relations as a highly relevant document and are ready to take proactive steps to connect to its implementation. But we are well aware that it can be successful only if we join our efforts.

We offer to hold a meeting very soon with representatives of other faiths to discuss a resolution adopted by the UN, and to develop a plan of our coordinated actions and measures for its implementation.

With deep respect and good prayers

Mufti Sheikh Ravil Gaynutdin

The Chairman of the Russian Mufties Council