 I must say that this has been a very enlightening morning and I'd like to commend the discussions for the richness of the conversations we've had today and the invaluable insights that have brought to our attention. I'm struck by the common threads in all the discussions, empathy, love, justice, fairness. A great deal of our inter-religious dialogue tends to focus on mediating the differences between various religions, creeds, and various positions. This is absolutely necessary. However, I sometimes feel that we don't speak enough about the common threads and those common things are binders. As a matter of fact, Professor was about to speak about some of them before he was caught short a few moments ago that all human beings, regardless of faith or ethnicity, desire much the same things to be valued, to be loved, to be treated with dignity and fairness, to possess at least the basics of life, food, shelter, clothing, sufficient for self and family. As we've heard from the first panel, the golden rule, love thy neighbour as thyself or do unto others as you'd have them do unto you. This rule occurs in practically every major religion and even in some iterations of secular constitutions. You find that this is a common thought and it's significant that there is a truth which all adherents of different faiths and even those who say they do not believe in God can confidently claim belongs specifically to their own creed or to their own way of thinking or collectively, you know, as people of faith or as those who even have no faith. Treating people the way we'd like to be treated imposes a moral obligation on us to put ourselves in the other person's shoes before we act. This is the very definition in my view of empathy. For those of us who are Christians an understanding of the Gospel of Jesus Christ for example reveals that Christianity is not in fact a religion. It is the establishment of relationship of love and forgiveness and reconciliation between God and man. But central to that message is that we are required to love God and then our neighbors as ourselves. But the Gospel goes on to say that it is a liar who says that he loves God but hates his neighbor. So the whole essence of the love of God itself is demonstrated in the love of one's neighbor. But love is a sacrificial act. It requires self-sacrifice which is why what Imam Abu Bakr Abdullahi did is deeply exemplary. When a band of herdsmen as they were described came into his village to kill Christians he put them in the mosque and in his home. And not just that, when they insisted that they were going to go in the mosque and his home to kill the Christians he said they had to kill him first. He put his life on the line for what he believed. And our religious leaders must accept that this is the true demonstration of leadership. We must go beyond rhetoric, beyond talking about tolerance. We must make the sacrifices that are required. And this is the real challenge of leadership leading rather than following. Preaching hate and suspicion attracts more attention and that's the truth and more popularity. So you don't need great leadership for that. You need great leadership to tell people to love those who hate them. To tell people to pray for those who curse them. To respond to hate with love and to show compassion and understanding to people of other faiths. That's what we need great leadership for. That's what we need our religious leaders to do. The easiest thing in the world is to preach suspicion. There's already enough suspicion. The fact that you belong to different beliefs already creates the basis for suspicion. And if we play those false lines, if we make it easy for those false lines to be perpetrated then we can't describe ourselves as true leaders. Recently I had the privilege of addressing young Muslims and Christians in a ceremony quite similar to this and even quite similar to this. I said to them that the great conflict of our time is not a clash between the civilizations or between Islam and Christianity but between extremism and human solidarity. Between the forces of hate and intolerance and those of empathy and peace. There is no... the religions and we've heard every side talk about the essence of the faith. The essence of this faith is peace and compassion and love. But the conflicts that we have are between those who belong to both religions and several other religions but who preach conflict, who preach hate and who preach intolerance. As practitioners of empathy this is our responsibility to build bridges and to seek common ground as a basis for national progress. In every diverse society a measure of conflict and discord is inevitable. This is the natural social consequence of our differences brushing up against each other. Whether these tensions become teachable moments for learning, for learning more about ourselves or the snowball into implacable hostility depends on how we address these tensions. As gatekeepers of the public mind the media and now especially the social media play a very crucial role in shaping our perception of these differences. Do we report tragedies and incidents of conflict in ways that promote the sanctity of human life or are we simply driven by the need to drive our sales or clicks now by promoting shock value, sensations, by treacherous violence and the cynical coverage of carnage? Are we using our platforms to amplify measured voices of reason or are we using them just to amplify the voices of divisive hate mongers? What are we using our platforms for? One key lesson in terms of media reportage of conflicts is that we must avoid the temptation to demonize whole groups by judging them by their most extreme fringes. We must resist the urge to portray communities in caricatures. I think it's important to stress that when an individual commits a crime he or she does not as an individual and is not necessarily a representative of an ethnic or religious community. Neither journalistic best practice nor legal convention subscribe to the idea of holding communities responsible for the actions of individuals. And this cycles back to the Golden Rule. Are we portraying the subjects of our reportage as demons? Are we demonizing them? Are we treating people? Are we portraying them in the way that we would like to be portrayed? So the people in the media and opinion-moulders have a responsibility to inspire us to think deeply about the complexities of our society. You have a responsibility to help us to see the bigger picture, to rise above prejudice and to apprehend the nuances that characterize intergroup relationships in a plural society such as ours. As the conversations that we've just witnessed have shown we have voices of reason and empathy in all of our religious communities. And I really want to urge the media and the social media which involves now every one of us as gatekeepers of the public mind to lend their platforms to advocates of peace and mutual understanding and therefore amplify our potential for harmonious coexistence. At the same time, we must ensure that we intentionally marginalize the agents of intolerance and hatred and deny them the ability to influence impressionable hearts and minds. As religious leaders and media personalities and also as people of faith in general we share a common calling to apprehend the truth. One truth that our diverse moral traditions agree on is the Golden Rule and it is in many respects the primary ethic and as we commit to practically leaving it out we will become a kinder, safer a more peaceful world and we will be able to bring even a more peaceful world into being. I want to say in particular about social media that we absolutely need to be careful with our use of social media and if we do not want to promote the kind of conflict that can go completely out of hand we must be sure that we are policing ourselves and regulating ourselves especially on social media. I don't think that government regulation is necessarily the way to go but I believe that we as persons of faith and we as leaders and those of us who use the social media actively owe a responsibility to our society and to everyone else to ensure that we don't allow it to become an instrument of conflict and an instrument of war. Recently I was sharing in a gathering about my auntie a lady who is 81 years old sometime before the elections some news went around the place that I had resigned my appointment as vice president and the news was all over the place it went around in social media I was on WhatsApp and all that and my auntie called me this 81 year old woman who lives in New Barton and she called me and said why did you resign? I said no auntie I didn't resign said no no no you resigned I said no I'm telling you auntie I didn't said if you didn't resign why is it on WhatsApp? I had to explain to her that I'm saying to you now even if it's on WhatsApp that I did not resign I just tells you and I think it was Reverend sister Agatha who mentioned that if we are not careful most people are not discerning enough to tell fact from fiction and no matter what it is and depending on what it is that you are spreading if you choose to spread the kind of news that can create real conflict and religious misinformation is the worst sort it can create the kind of conflict that can completely get out of hand and jeopardize all of our lives livelihoods and properties and everything so I really want to say to us that it is important that we keep self-regulating and we keep ensuring that we don't lend our platforms for those who are who have those platforms to people who will promote conflict I'd like to join others in commending his excellency the ambassador who is a true believer in peace and tolerance for hosting this dialogue a few weeks ago in Lagos he hosted the UAE Nigeria Cultural Day where we celebrated the brotherhood of our countries through the arts in you and the good people of the UAE we are delighted to say that we have true partners for peace I want to thank everyone for listening and thank you very much for participating in this dialogue Thank you