In a symposium themed “Religious and Political Toleration in Yemen” and organized by the Cultural Bridges Forum (CBF), the participants called on the religious, cultural and political institutions as well as media, political parties and civil society organizations to work for promoting the values of toleration and peaceful coexistence.

They also called for considering such values as the foundation stone in all their plans and working for the service of social peace goals and human and international coexistence.

The symposium, chaired by President Saleh advisor on Political Affairs Abdul Karim Al-Eryani, addressed two important points. The first point is that there is nothing in heavenly messages calling for differences and hostility. All messages assert the oneness of creator and adopt love, peace and coexistence among people.

 The second point hints that the political conscription of religious dimension is to blame for increased enmity and the aggressive tendencies, consequently leading to terrorism.

Several participants stressed that religious and political toleration has been and still is a salient feature in Yemeni people’s life. Yemenis have not given up toleration only when people with extreme ideology and wrong beliefs dominated the scene or became decision makers.

Head of Yemeni Journalists Syndicate Nasr Taha Mustapha called authorities to secure an immediate release of and drop charges against fellow Mohammed Al-Maqaleh, considering it to be a significant manifestation of religious tolerations.

Presenting a paper on “Reflections on Political Toleration”, Mustafa also called for giving up fellow journalist Abdul Karim Al-Khaiwani’s trial. His paper

The secretary general of the Yemeni Socialist Party Yassin Sa’eed Noman presented a paper in which he provided his vision on how to set foundation for deep toleration culture between nations and people.

Noman accused the regime of practicing exclusion under ideological, religious or sectarian, maintaining that such exclusion can be made for other military, tribal, sectarian bigotry leading later to sidelining a big segment of Yemeni people.

He added that the democratic project in Yemen has not reached the place that it should reach and it has not set the required conditions for establishing a multi-party system that can allow a peaceful transfer of power.

Moreover, Yassin claimed that the authorities follow insidious techniques as they recruit those with extreme thinking to work against their political enemies, something that cause them to grow and become stronger.

He also emphasized the importance of promoting toleration culture and reviving the dialogue of religions which has traveled long way to promote human coexistence and disengagement of what is religious and what is political as well as working against the political exploitation of religion.  

Yassin maintained that terrorism has no religion or home and called for revising the notions which fit no more into the modern life as well the policies that could contribute to the swelling of extremism.

For his part, Al-Eryani emphasized the importance of adhering to toleration culture at the present time, hinting that Yemen has been a heaven to different doctrines religion as well as a safe haven for political hopefuls.

Al-Eryani continued that we are in the greatest need for promoting toleration and acceptance of others. He called as well for rejecting sectarianism, differences and prejudiced categorization of people and society.

Alawi Abdullah Taher’s paper dealt with the manifestations of religious toleration. He stated that there were 39 temples in Sana’a in 1931, while the number of mosques was 49.

The total population of Sana’a reached 50,000 in 1931, including 6,000 Jews. There were also several temples and churches in Aden, hinting that Jews helped the British occupy Aden in 1839.

In his paper, journalist Hasan Al-Zaidi enquired about the reasons why toleration culture does not exist in tribal societies especially when some revenge killing issues are still existent now though they date 40 to 50 years back.