The Islamic World Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (ICESCO) headquarters in Rabat, hosted, Monday morning, the signing ceremony of an agreement between ICESCO and the Mohammadia League of Religious Scholars in the Kingdom of Morocco.

On this occasion, Dr. Salim M. AlMalik, ICESCO Director General, held a meeting with Dr. Ahmed Abbadi, Secretary General of the League, in the presence of delegation of the League leaders, and ICESCO leaders and experts.

Dr. AlMalik opened the meeting with a speech, in which he welcomed the Secretary General of the League and the accompanying delegation, and praised the great attention that King Mohammed VI accords to knowledge and scholars, in addition to the special attention he gives to ICESCO, adding that this attention presents us with the great challenge of achieving both His Majesty’s and the Islamic peoples’ objectives.

The Director General added that the cooperation agreement, which is being signed today with the Mohammadia League, is founded on preparing guides for fortification against extremist discourse, organizing qualifying programs and national training sessions in that area, holding lectures and a guide for the monitoring and assessment of immunization progress, preparing an encyclopedia on the deconstruction of extremist discourse, and networking universities in terms of research in Islamic sciences.

ICESCO Director General concluded his speech by emphasizing the urgent necessity to achieve the goals of this agreement in the shortest possible time, adding that the entire Organization is putting this agreement at the center of its attention, and will strive to implement the initiatives included therein.

Then, Dr. Ahmed Abbadi, Secretary General of the Mohammadia League delivered a speech in which he thanked Dr. AlMalik and ICESCO for the fruitful and continuous cooperation with the League, and said that the agreement being signed today between the two sides aims to achieve two goals. The first is to seek further functionality for scientific research in the fields of humanities and social sciences, and the second is to develop the necessary activities and applications to “immunize” youth against extremism and terrorism.

Afterwards, Najib Rhiati, Director of Culture at ICESCO, delivered a speech in which he praised the cooperation between the two sides, and said that the agreement includes 6 projects, three of them aim to rebuilding mechanisms to achieve the transition from fortifying youth in the Islamic societies to immunizing them against extremism and terrorism, namely preparing guides for persons active in combating extremist ideology and terrorism, and implement training sessions to facilitate the interaction of those individuals with the guides, and then evaluate training sessions and guides to assess their effectiveness.

Then, Dr. Abdelilah Benarafa, Cultural Advisor to the Director General of ICESCO, took the floor and mentioned that the other three projects aim at bringing together scholars and youth in the Islamic world, affirming that scholars must reach out to youth and open dialogue channels with them, be aware of their hopes and aspirations, and deal with them closely. He added that these projects include networking universities and research centers, giving lectures in the field of humanities research, and working on preparing an encyclopedia on the deconstruction of the extremist discourse.

At the end, Dr. AlMalik and Dr. Abbadi signed the cooperation agreement between the two sides.