Transcript
AMB. AHMED: A brief comment on the film, just a few minutes, and then I will request the panel to comment, give their reactions, and then I hope we will have some time for some questions.
The film you saw was really a Channel 5 film production, a marvelous team of committed, British technicians. I had no say in it, so I am not taking any credit. The credit goes entirely to the producers and director of the film itself. They are hoping to have a sequel. It was a great hit in the United Kingdom when it was shown last month, terrific reviews. Most of the papers picked it up as the pick of the day or pick of the week, and we are hoping that the next series will take us to our part of the world, represented by both the Ambassador and the Deputy Chief here, Assam Hahn.
The focus was on three big cities - Istanbul, Damascus, and Cairo - and through these cities to tell the story and bring in the culture of Islam and also to emphasize - you may have seen and picked up the two or three themes in this film - the importance of learning in Islam, and that theme comes up again and again.
I think one of the most significant sayings of the Prophet, and I hope you will pick it up because there are so many scholars here this evening, is that the ink of the scholar is more sacred than the blood of the martyr. I cannot over-emphasize this. If you can convince the youth of the Muslim World of this saying - perhaps they don't even know about it - you could change the direction of the thinking of the coming generation. If you don't, you are stuck with a lot of people who see the world in reverse; they see the blood of the martyr as more important than the ink of the scholar.
Secondly, you see the history of Islam itself glimpsed through the architecture, the synthesis, the inclusiveness, the periods where Jews and Christians and Muslims could live together and work together.
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