IslamicFinance.de

On April 11, the UN-secretary general, Antonio Guterres, urged religious leaders of all faiths to unite and work together to fight the common battle against COVID-19. The call for interfaith solidarity is echoing at a time when governments are discouraging or even forbidding all kinds of public gatherings including religious festivals, rituals and large congregations. Religious leaders from Christianity, Judaism and Islam have come together to develop creative ways to provide comfort, care and worship services to individuals and families via different digital media. Multifaith unity and collaborative efforts are very much needed to mitigate the pandemic.

The World Social Forum (WSF) will hold its next global gathering in March 2015 in Tunis. Since 2001, the forums took place annually around the same dates as the World Economic Forum in Davos. Organized every two years since 2007, the event has now become somewhat less visible. Some of the reasons for the frustration with the WSF are related to dilemmas of representation. For the activists that reject representation as a political principle, the forums have been too embedded in traditional politics. For those who want to build global political parties, the WSF’s open space has lacked the capacity for action. These are some of the questions that need to be debated on the road to the next WSF in Tunis.