Despite all the obvious difficulties, the coronavirus pandemic has opened unprecedented opportunities for intercultural communication through new formats. The statement was made at the forum "Islam in a Multicultural World", held today in Kazan, by Vitaly Naumkin, member of GSV "Russia - Islamic World", Scientific Director of the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Scientific Director of the Department for the Study of Islamic Civilization (based at the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences) of the Institute of International Relations of the KFU.
According to him, the name of the forum corresponds to the contemporary challenges, marked by the globalization processes. The pandemic has slowed down this process, but at the same time allowed for intercultural communication through new formats of communication with an unlimited number of people located in different parts of the world.
The expert particularly noted the modernizing trends observed in contemporary leaders of Russian Islam and in the Islamic world as a whole, even in countries such as Saudi Arabia, which is traditionally considered conservative.
It is thanks to such phenomena and the unity of the entire world that extremists and terrorists have lost heavily in recent years. Here, as Naumkin emphasized, it becomes especially important to actively develop Islamic education and Oriental studies, which are important factors in countering such deadly trends as extremism and terrorism.
GSV "Russia - Islamic World"