Dalai Lama to join top academics to address Islamic youth-organized climate change issues event

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File-photo: His Holiness the Dalai Lama with journalists in Geneva, Switzerland. (Photo courtesy: Olivier Adam)

(TibetanReview.net, Jan03’22) – The Muslim Youth Movement of Malaysia or Angkatan Belia Islam Malaysia (ABIM) has invited Tibet’s exiled spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, to speak on climate change issues at a dialogue being organized by it over Jan 15-16, reported thestar.com.my Jan 3. He will be joined by top multidisciplinary scholars in the fields of Islamic, Buddhist, bio-ethic, and environmental science studies.

The Dalai Lama’s participation will apparently be online as the organizers have confirmed that he will be taking part in the event since this will not entail any visa hassle under an inevitable pressure from China.

The report cited Abim president Muhammad Faisal Abdul Aziz as saying the Tibetan Buddhist spiritual leader would be one of several global intellectual figures at the Islam & Buddhism Eco Dialogue (IBED 2022).

The report quoted a Jan 3 statement from him as saying, “Abim, together with the Tibetan Buddhist Culture Centre (TBCC), Universiti Malaya (UM) and several collaborators will be organizing IBED 2022 featuring world intellectual figures from Islam and Buddhism as one of the ways to find solutions to the impact of climate change as well as to create awareness among the global community.”

He has stressed that “the major disasters occurring in recent times, including those currently faced by our country, are the impact of climate change happening around the world.”

Others invited to speak at the event were stated to include Prof Datuk Dr Osman Bakar (emeritus professor of philosophy at the University of Malaya, the Chair Professor and Director of Sultan Omar Ali Saifuddien Centre for Islamic Studies, Universiti Brunei Darussalam), Dr Reza Shah Kazemi (founding editor of the Islamic World Report, former Consultant to the Institute for Policy Research in Kuala Lampur, and currently a Research Fellow with the Department of Academic Research and Publications), Prof Dr KL Dhammajoti (founder and director of the Buddhist Dharma Center of Hong Kong, founding editor of the Journal of Buddhist Studies from the Centre for Buddhist Studies, Sri Lanka), Dr Bhikkhuni Dhammananda (former academic, author of more than 100 books, and the first Thai woman to be ordained in a Theravada monastic lineage) and Datuk Prof Dr Azizan Baharudin (Director-General of Institute of Islamic Understanding Malaysia and author of more than 200 works in the fields of bioethics, interfaith/intercivilisational dialogue, Islam and science, environmental ethics & religion and sustainable development).

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