The representative of Palestinians resistance group Hamas made the remarks in an exclusive interview with Mehr News Agency on Saturday on the sideline of the 32nd Islamic Unity Conference in Tehran.
Here is the full text of the interview:
How do you evaluate the conference in general?
Bismillah al-Rahman al-Rahim. The conference is the 32nd attempt for the Islamic unity. Surely, it’s very positive to gather those different schools of thought, different sects, even different lives and cultures in one place to bridge the gap and very huge and tremendous results will come out of it. I think the only thing that we need to make it more successful is to transcend from rhetoric and speeches to practical implementations and programs. And this is what we required today since we have mentioned that Palestine and Jerusalem is a big umbrella that gathers all of us; so that means we need some practical steps to move forward like how to confront the Israeli hegemony in the region, how to confront the Zio-American hegemony in the region. We are elites and we have big responsibilities that we have to do in front of our nations.
What are the main barriers which hinder the achievement of Islamic unity?
There are many but I believe that they are very fragile and they are not very solid barriers. Let me talk about for example how to feel the empathy; we feel that we do not try to understand the view of others, so we insist on the view of ourselves. We look at different people whose opinion differs from us and when we say that ‘the other’, then we are dealing with these people with a very big gap. When we think that we are one and we have to decide together, then we have bridged those gaps. ‘How to understand each other’; I believe this is the biggest barrier which we have to bridge and I think that it is easy for us to do so.
Interview by Mohammad Ali Haqshenas