It is a great pleasure to be with you all at the Sixth World Conference on Islamic Thought and Civilization. I have concentrated, in previous speeches, on the scale of the humanitarian crisis facing our world today. But it is a tragedy, too, because of what we stand to lose when we reject and deny cultural diversity. Different backgrounds, different faiths, different ethnicities: we all have so much to gain and “learn from one another”, as the Quran enjoins! Hall, “Measuring Cultural Diversity: Ethnic, Linguistic and Religious Fractionalization in the OECD”, Ethnic and Racial Studies 35:2 (2011): 195-217.
