The Grand Imam, Dr Ahmad al-Tayyeb Shaykh Al-Azhar, delivered the keynote address in the opening session of the international conference on peace, titled ‘Daring Peace’. Present in the session, which took place at Sant’Egidio, in Rome, Italy, were the President of the Italian Republic, Sergio Mattarella, Queen Mathilde of Belgium and numerous other international leaders, religious figures and representatives of peace organisations.
In his momentous discourse, the Grand Imam focussed on the importance of absolute justice, he said: “The concept of absolute justice is the golden foundation upon which the heavens and the earth were established—a divine principle made by Allah Himself which is the ultimate guarantee of human rights: equality, freedom, dignity, security, peace, and human fraternity, regardless of differences in race, gender, colour, religion, or language.”
The Grand Imam highlighted how the deliberate disregard of these values has led to chaos and destruction in the present civilisation. He remarked: “The most tragic of these are the senseless wars imposed upon helpless, impoverished peoples who possess neither the means nor the power to repel the hands of their aggressors—men hardened of heart and dead of conscience, who mock the very sanctity of human life, and scorn the inviolability that Allah Himself forbade to be violated in His divine scriptures and revelations.”
The Grand Imam linked the absence of justice and the rise of such conflicts to the devastating economic crises which has manifested in poverty, unemployment, famine, and the division of the world into a wealthy, indulgent North and a destitute, war-torn South, burdened with debt, disease, and despair. The Grand Imam said: “Added to this are environmental crises born of reckless exploitation of natural resources; political crises marked by unrest, conflict, fear, intimidation, and uncertainty; and social crises that assault the sacred beliefs and moral foundations of peoples—targeting the institution of the family and the innocence of children, and promoting deviant alternatives rejected by religions, morality, and sound human nature—the very nature upon which Allah created humankind from the time of Adam, peace be upon him, until this very day.”
The Grand Imam continued: “What the modern world’s man truly lacks is the morality of justice, whose absence has caused a grave disorder in the standards that distinguish between good and evil, beauty and ugliness, right and wrong. It has become all too common to see injustice disguised as law, domination and arrogance justified in the name of the ‘world order’, and atrocities and violations excused on grounds of ‘interest’ or ‘expediency’.”
The Grand Imam further commented: “These interlocking crises reveal nothing less than a profound disorder afflicting the world order—one that has lost its moral compass and now measures with double, or rather a hundred standards whenever it serves its interests. This moral disease, which has struck at the very heart of international justice, can only be explained by the rise of abhorrent racism and arrogance upon the earth—both utterly contrary to the divine law of absolute justice laid down by Islam, the faith I believe in, and indeed by all the heavenly revelations that preceded it—revelations in which I believe just as firmly as I believe in the message of Islam. It is also the same justice upheld by the greatest of philosophers—from Plato and Aristotle, through Al-Farabi and Averroes, to the European thinkers of modern times who believed in the ethics of duty and the sanctity of the human conscience.”
The Grand Imam reiterated the importance of justice: “We must remember, when justice is absent, injustice inevitably prevails. Where people’s rights are violated, values decay and disappear; humanity itself is trampled underfoot—beneath the greed of material interests, the arrogance of false strength, and the intoxication of power. When the weak are stripped of their rights, and the oppressor is honoured for having stolen them; when the human being is reduced to a mere number in political calculations or a cheap commodity in market economies—then we know that the sun of truth has set, or nearly so, and that our world is plunging into a moral void foretelling the collapse of moral orders before even the collapse of their values.”
The Grand Imam highlighted the pivotal role of Al-Azhar Al-Sharif with the Muslim Council of Elders and the Vatican City State in advancing justice and human solidarity. He recalled the Document on Human Fraternity, launched in 2019 and jointly signed by the Grand Imam and the late Pope Francis. The Grand Imam said: “In that historic document, we made it clear that peace is not a negative state defined merely by the absence of arms—something almost impossible to achieve—but rather a positive and active condition grounded in the presence of justice and fairness. We affirmed that justice is not the victory of one party over another, but the triumph of humanity itself over the impulses of selfishness, domination, and material greed that pervade our social, economic, and moral lives.”
The Grand Imam also explained the importance of Artificial Intelligence requiring guidelines of morality and ethics to govern it. The Grand Imam said: “Artificial intelligence has now become one of the most transformative forces shaping our societies. We therefore bear a moral duty to harness this technology in the service of a more equitable and just future for humanity. We must recognise that safeguarding our spiritual and moral heritage in the use of such technology is not a luxury or an optional concern—it is an ethical commitment and a profound human responsibility. Indeed, I would not be exaggerating to say that we now stand at a civilisational crossroads: either we allow this invention to deepen moral and civilizational decline, or we employ it as a driving force to restore and correct the course of humanity.”
In the field of AI, the Grand Imam began to draft a Charter on the Ethics of Artificial Intelligence but before it could be completed and released, Pope Francis passed away. Joint teams from Al-Azhar Al-Sharif, the Vatican, and the Muslim Council of Elders today continue working on finalising this Charter—to serve as a universal moral and human reference that regulates the proper relationship between humankind and the technologies of its own creation, ensuring that Artificial Intelligence remains in the service of humanity, not a sword drawn against it.
In conclusion, the Grand Imam reiterated: “The world today stands in dire need of justice to restore its tranquillity, and of a revival of human conscience—one that understands that even the smallest act of injustice is a spark capable of igniting the flames of conflict anywhere on earth. Every human being wronged in this world is a wound that never heals in the body of humanity as a whole. This world will not rise from its repeated collapses until it comes to believe that justice is the supreme law of life, and that peace is its natural outcome. In essence, the root of today’s corruption lies in the separation of ethics from faith—in the attempt to preserve morality while discarding religion. For when morality is severed from its divine foundation, it is left at the mercy of the wind, easily transformed into a weapon of conflict, greed, and oppression against the poor and the weak.”
