The Grand Imam, Dr Ahmad al-Tayyeb Shaykh al-Azhar, the Chairman of the Muslim Council of Elders delivered the keynote address during the opening session of the Arab Media Summit in Dubai, United Arab Emirates which was held from May 26 to May 28, 2025. This event was attended by leaders of various Arab media channels and held under the patronage of the Vice President and Prime Minister of the United Arab Emirates, Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum.
The Grand Imam spoke powerfully on the importance of Arab media, the heart-wrenching situation in Gaza, the decline in morals and ethics, the spread of Islamophobia and the importance of connecting Artificial Intelligence with moral responsibility.
Importance of the Media
The Grand Imam expressed his wishes for the conference organisers and participants to succeed in developing a joint, applicable Arab media strategy capable of communicating the reality of this ummah (community) and communicating its pains and tragedies. The Grand Imam emphasised the importance of this Arab media strategy to be qualified to protect the youth. Providing an insight into the potential pitfalls of digital platforms, the Grand Imam said: “Digital platforms are about to control their feelings and emotions and they are working hard to distract them from the reality of their community and from facing its challenges. These platforms are about to make their evil deeds seem more attractive to them by blurring the lines between virtue and vice in the minds of many of them. They are also promoting false and highly enticing slogans such as progress, openness, freedom, modernity, and the rejection of reactionism, obscurantism, and backwardness. This is in addition to other slogans that have afflicted our country with a significant number of societal ills that have negatively impacted public taste and common sense, disrupting the standards of good and evil, and the balance of right and wrong.”
The Grand Imam reiterated how the Arabs and Muslims have suffered from media messages and reports which distort their image in the West. These messages have linked Islam to violence, extremism, and the oppression of women, and have falsely and slanderously portrayed it as a ‘social movement’ or ‘political ideology’ that advocates violence, fanaticism, hatred, and rebellion against the global order. He noted that the Western media has taken on the brunt of these fabrications, and it continues to practice them to this day. He cited what the fair-minded Christian writer and thinker Dr Edward Said recorded in his famous book, ‘Covering Islam’. In describing the Western media’s coverage of this religion, which is followed by nearly two billion Muslims in the East and West of the world, he said: “Careful research has shown that there is hardly a prime-time television program without several episodes containing racist and derogatory stereotypes of Muslims. Consequently, a single Muslim is considered representative of all Muslims and of Islam in general.”
The Grand Imam stressed that many misleading images have permeated Arab and Muslim countries which have negatively impacted and alienated the Arab media discourse. The Grand Imam stated: “This plan has employed figures from our own kin who have excelled in exporting a false culture concerned with criticising everything that is Arab in origin or Islamic in thought and orientation. This has increased the gravity of current challenges, foremost among which is the widening gap between our contemporary awareness and our heritage, which until recently was one of the strongest sources of our pride, honour, and steadfastness in the face of those who tamper with the past and present of this nation.”
Gaza
Emphasising the overwhelming concern of the people from around the world, in particular the Arabs and the Muslims, the Grand Imam said: “I do not think that any fair-minded person—in the East or the West—would dispute that the issue that should be the focus of the Arab media day and night is the Gaza issue, and the wars and destruction that have befallen it, and the heinous violations that have accompanied them, which the peoples of the world have denied and continue to deny and despise, for nineteen consecutive months. Due to this, the utmost importance and historical responsibility rests on the shoulders of the Arab media with its role in continuously exposing the injustice suffered by the owners of the land and those with rights. Their responsibility lies in highlighting the steadfastness of this people and their adherence to their land and keeping the Palestinian cause a burning flame in the conscience of the peoples of the world, East and West. It is a duty of fairness to appreciate and welcome the change we are witnessing today in the positions of many European Union countries regarding what has happened and continues to happen in Gaza, and we greatly applaud the awakening of their human conscience.”
Islamophobia
The Grand Imam strongly condemned the promotion of Islamophobia and the lack of response to it by saying: “We are still waiting for many intensive media efforts to confront the illegitimate phenomenon called, ‘Islamophobia’ and to address its negative effects in the Western domain. This is even though it is nothing more than an illusion or a sick imagination from which exaggerations have been made to distort the image of Islam and undermine its principles that are based on peace and coexistence. Despite the established rights of humans, animals, plants and inanimate objects in Islamic law; we do not know of its equivalent in contemporary laws, systems and policies that their creators have always praised and reproached us for lacking.”
Ethics and Morals
The Grand Imam added: “Western media campaigns are not limited to the mission of distorting Islam and the great civilisation that arose in its shadow, whose value and worth and contribution to enlightening, educating and advancing humanity are well known to Westerners. Rather, they have extended beyond that to another mission; an attempt to undermine the constants of Eastern civilisation and the foundations of its ethics and its human and familial society, and a call to obliterate the features of these ethics. These campaigns have called for personal freedom first, even if that leads to the destruction of the family, changing its form and replacing it with other systems that strike at the heart of children’s rights, permitting the commission of what is forbidden by religious laws, and even human taste and human customs. They have allowed men to marry men and women to marry women, alongside justifying atheism and rebellion against the nature of religiousness, in an effort aimed at drying up all sources of strength, independence and feelings of pride in the Arab and Islamic personality. All of this, or some of it, is worthy of placing on the necks of all of us – especially the media – the responsibility of seriously thinking about how to confront this. The poisonous winds and saving our youth and our homelands from the factors of alienation, annihilation and dissolution they carry.”
Artificial Intelligence (AI)
The Grand Imam also highlighted the importance of Artificial Intelligence (AI) “being fenced with moral responsibility and professional controls so that it does not turn into a ferocious monster that threatens all of humanity. The responsibility here falls on the shoulders of experts and legislators, and they alone must protect these technologies from deviating from their correct goals, based on humane principles far removed from the purposes of hegemony, control, and cultural invasion.” He indicated to a comprehensive document which was being prepared on the ethics of artificial intelligence with the late Pope Francis, and which was set to be published before his passing. However, he confirmed progress is still being made with the new era of the Vatican to complete this project.
Closing Remarks and Supplication
In conclusion, the Grand Imam recalled the tragedy of Palestinian journalists and others who were destined to pay with their lives for the honour of speech, the sanctity of truth, and the portrayal of reality without falsification or distortion. More than 200 media professionals were martyred in Gaza, and many others were severely injured, had their limbs amputated, had their homes destroyed, lost their families, or had their families displaced. He accentuated: “The systematic targeting of journalists in Gaza aims to silence the voice of truth, prevent a clear and scandalous image of the atrocity of the aggression, obliterate evidence, mislead justice, and prevent the documentation of crimes committed day and night. From this standpoint, I call on everyone who belongs to the noble profession of media to participate in developing an Arab media strategy that will serve as a shield to protect the truth, safeguard the values of the nation, and preserve its identity.”
