 This is a really, really interesting panel, especially given the times we're in. I'm Randall Lane. I'm the Chief Content Officer at Forbes. And I would like to think that this is a start of a good joke. Like, you know, what happens when a Cardinal Rabbi, a Sheik, and a professor walk into a bar? But it's actually a great panel that's going to push, I think push a lot of people's thinking, both here in the room and most important around the world. I have put out a report recently in conjunction coming up to the conference here about faith and action, faith in the workplace specifically, which is something that I think previously is something that hasn't been discussed much and some of the top lines were really, really surprising, I think, to a lot of lay people. 85% of people in this world identify, 80-85% identify as part of a religious community. So this is a large majority of the world. And what the report focused on a lot was how this affects the workplace and specifically how this can affect the workplace in a positive way. So I think that's what we're going to try to talk about here today is positivity because, you know, faith can be one of the great ultimate forces for good in the world and there's also been a lot of bad things done in the world over history in the name of faith, incorrectly, but in the name of faith. And so I think what we're here to do is talk about this specifically through the workplace but also through creating change at scale. And we have a terrific, terrific panel to talk about. So I'll go right down the line and they'll do a quick intro and then we'll get right into it. I have right to my left. I have Cardinal Turksen, who is the chancellor at two of the top academies, the political academy of sciences and the political academy of social sciences of the Holy See. Thank you, Cardinal, for being here. Next we have Harry Hahn, who's a professor at Johns Hopkins who specifically studies the professor of political science and specifically studies the role of faith in the workplace in society and politics. Then next we have Shikam Mofuz bin Bayaa, secretary general of the Abu Dhabi Forum for Peace. I've been going to Abu Dhabi every twice a year and the work that you've done over the last ten years, you could feel it. There's a new Abrahamic Museum honoring all three religions that I've been watching go up year by year near the Louvre and you actually can see physically see the difference that you're making. So we appreciate Shikam being here. And then last we have Robert Pincus Goldschmidt, the chief rabbi of Moscow right now in Epsensia. The president of the Conference of European Rabbis and a great leader and we thank you for your leadership in terms of being a positive force in terms of speaking about the war in Ukraine. So thank you all for being here. I want to throw this out and I want to encourage us to have a conversation in the spirit of inner faith, in the spirit of mutual respect which is why it's such an honor to have you all here about what... I think the first question is the report talks a lot about positivity. What do you think whoever wants to jump in first is driving and what's the key driver for positive change? Positive change, using religion for positive change, especially in the workplace but also in other aspects of society. What do you think the number one driver is that you've seen? Anybody? Shik, you study this. We all study it but you live this at your forum. I like always to talk the last one because I will benefit from their answers especially when you put me between rabbi and cardinal and professors or I'm not one of them. But I would say knowing one another, it's very important. So I think the line between... In Arabic they said, if you ignore something you create as an enemy. So I think if we're knowing one another, I am in touch with rabbis and cardinals and pastors and professors that specialize in this. I feel the barriers go down and do I see them as just my brothers in humanity or even my brothers in the faith of the existence of God and looking for a better solution and changing religion for religion for peace. I think knowing one another it's a very important concept. Professor, what are you seeing? Yeah, so I do a lot of work with the evangelical community in the United States and one of the big mega churches that I've studied a lot, they have this saying that I think really captures what the Shik was just saying. What percentage of the U.S. identifies as evangelical? Identifies as an evangelical Christian about a third. So it's a pretty large, it's a largest single faith tradition. But there's a saying that one of the communities that we do a lot of work with I think really captures what you said, which is the idea that belonging comes before belief. Which is really powerful if you think about it, because we live in a world where so many of the organizations that we have put belief before belonging, right? Like first you have to adhere to a certain kind of orthodoxy and then you're invited to become a part of the community and I think these faith communities really build off of this idea that anyone is welcome. What specifically I might push you on that? The interaction between faith and race, which is something also I know you've done some work with how does that play out and how can that be a force for positivity? Right, so in the United States at least, obviously the white evangelical and the black evangelical community and sort of other kind of evangelical communities tend to be very separate. But what we see is that, here's a couple data points. So the largest 9% of churches in the U.S. capture 50% of the church going population, right? So church attendance is heavily skewed towards big churches and the average large church over the past decade used to be that only something like 20% of them were multi-racial and now you see that almost half of them are multi-racial and almost all of them have become more multi-racial over time and so we're starting to see more mixing than we had in the past. So I think there's opportunities there that haven't been realized. I think that's a good way segue to talk Rabbi about how what you've seen in terms of the work you've been doing for the last couple years about religion as a force for peace. Right. I think right now it doesn't feel like that to a lot of the world as they look at it but you've been, you know, you've been very, very, you know, you've been a leader in terms of trying to create a peace movement. Yes, religious leaders have a cue role to play and played a cue role in many instances for peace. In the past, talking about a person who was also many times invited by the World Economic Forum, Archbishop Desmond Tutto who peacefully was there to end apartheid and peace to work on the Pinochet and speak from my experience in Russia, the Russian Orthodox Church, one of the great experts on the Russian Orthodox Church was James Billington, who was a librarian of the Library of Congress who said back then in I think 1992 that the church can be a vehicle for change for democratization or can be there just to bring back Russia to a totally authoritarian past. And we have seen what happened during the last 30 years. It's exactly what happened with the help of the church. Rabbi, following up on that, you're working Ukraine. How's that, some of the things you've talked about there affected your work there? There was a lot of pressure on religious leaders in Russia to support the war. Once the war didn't go the way they thought it would go against Ukraine and I left Russia and decided it is my duty to be there with the victims, not with the perpetrators who went and we helped refugees who left Ukraine, there were 10 million refugees back then. And we criticized the war and I had to resign because of that and what I think is very important and I've seen also religious leaders of other faith in the Orthodox Church and other churches who took a position and criticized the war. However, there is no support system for them. There was no support system for them, not from business, not from NGOs, not from the media and actually it is when people ask me why are you one of the only ones who spoke out against the war? Because there is no support system for those who want to do that. I want to segue to Cardinal, you've been similarly doing work in another area that we're talking about, we've heard a lot about Ukraine here this week at LEV. We of course hear a lot about climate change. You've been a real leader in terms of the Vatican and pushing a very positive and aggressive message on climate change. Tell us how you interact with that vitally important topic as a religious leader. Okay, so thanks. In the first place, I think the very first question you put about the role of religion and all, I think the basic fact to recognize about religion or faith is that it helps to understand the basic, let's say, anthropological question. Who is a human person? And the understanding of the human person is based on its sense of relationship with a deity or whatever. So the sense of the human person, the basic anthropological question is properly answered when you're talking about it with faith leaders or religious leaders by reference to their faith, by the reference to their affirmation of a deity or a God above them and all which serves to explain what it means to be human, what it means to be man and what it means to engage in society in very many ways. This I think is a very basic point to note that our sense of religion gives us an understanding about also what it means to be human and from understanding about what it means to be human also understand how it means to engage for the promotion of the well-being of the human person and all. This is how I think from the part of the church in the Vatican we have proceeded. It's always faith leads to the understanding of basic anthropological question. Who is the human person and what is its life for and what kind of things it engages in. So everything we've done has been by way of dealing with that. Therefore, we find religion to be very concrete. It's a way of promoting the well-being of the human person giving sense and value to everything that it means to be human. It also means that we do not consider the human person as self-creating. He was created, therefore has to acquire sense of his own being with reference to his creator and all and that has led us to engage in several terms by way of promoting this. And so for example, you mentioned a few things about the climate and all. What we began or started off doing is to help place the human person and his concern at the center of economics. So we developed a small booklet called The Vocation of the Business Leader and it was an attempt to encourage business leaders to recognize that the value, the true value of business is how it promotes the well-being of the human person. And it's the same thing that we've done with mining companies. Same thing we've done with energy. When we did convoke the sea of oil and gas companies in the Vatican, it was for the same term. So the sense of the human person drawn from our faith or religion is what inspires the very many ways that we engage in concrete action for society and the well-being of the human person. Maybe you could talk about your work with the Council for Inclusive Capitalism. The idea of the Vatican is actually taking steps directly with business. How does that work? Yeah, it was so. We say for example through business, business people produce goods. So they need to ensure if the goods are meant to serve the well-being of the human person then the goods to be truly good. It's not goods that... You're putting the good in goods. Yeah, the goods to be truly good. The working force that produces the goods to be truly dignifying work. The process of the work should also the wealth created must also be equally shared and all. So everything about labor and work is not just about maximizing profit. It's everything that's meant to promote the well-being of the human person. Shaikh, the only topic I think that we've been talking more about than climate change, which we discussed, is AI. And you've been actually focused a lot on how AI will change business, how it will change religion. You've been studying that. What have been your findings so far? First, I want to thank the people that have been behind this, Dave, and others to make this happening because I remember when they had C-100 long time ago the religion community would benefit from the ideas of C-100 at that time. And maybe the work we're doing, even what we reached now, from our goals has come from that room. So we thank them so much for creating again this plan of action that we would love to see and I would love to host next year on the side of the World Economic Forum, a World Peace Forum in conjunction with World Economic Forum and my organization will take care of 100 participants if they agree with that and support it. So that's just something I want to throw at the front of all of you to support me. Please do your best, especially... You can't have peace without a good economy, by the way. Professor Catherine Marshall, she's here and she should be the one talking behalf of Islam here because of how much she provides ideas for us all these times when we're working in a hard time. Second thing, for your question, it's about AI. We're working with FATICAN and the Bites of Israel about how to create, to have AI and ethics to remind the companies of the human needs and ethics. And this concerns to every family, to every person he's going to send his kids to school and he's going to learn from AI that there is other body that's not controlling but reminding. We are reminders. We're not controllers. When it comes to religion and belief, we are not controllers. We don't control anyone. We don't control anyone to move from religion to other religion. And that's why my organization started work with Maraksh declaration for protecting non-Muslim minority in Muslim majority countries. And that was because of the feeling to prevent genocide in the name of the religion. And that time we see some bad things happening in Iraq and other places and we had that declaration. So AI now, it's a paradigm shift. We're all scared from everything new. And just three days ago, I was in a gathering for 1,000 youth and women and leaders of religion in Africa and in workshop Mauritania attended by two president of Africa. That's the platform we create in Africa just to talk about African problem and African issue not to parasite religion from Middle East to other place to Africa. No, African, they need to think about their own. So we talk about AI and for them it's not a priority and they don't care. They already have a lot of things before they think about AI but we want to really do, we've been able to host some people online to explain for them what is AI and that's very a priority for us and I think it's a plan of action. They have this priority of AI, sorry for talking long. We're at the World Economic Forum. I would ask them not to write this, I'm sure, because Forbes we're starting and we've started a community, a faith forward community right now in LinkedIn and I look forward to when it starts to become an in-person community too. I'd like each of you and I'll maybe start with Rabbi and I'll start with you and come on down. What do each of you think makes a business faith forward versus kind of faith private? I think faith provides... Or faith phobic, really. What makes a business faith forward versus faith phobic? I think there's a lot of misconception about the faith is the cause for wars, for problems, for divisions, for people not ready to work together but just to give you one example, the great achievement of last year's was with the Abrahamic Accords in the Arab Peninsula with Israel, the Emirates Bahrain and Sudan and Morocco. Now, what is interesting is that the title of this arrangement was not some new middle, it was Abraham, Abraham or Ibrahim, it was a religious figure which unites actually the faith, the older Abrahamic faith and this was the uniting example which actually created the new Middle East. So this could happen in terms of business and faith as well when doors open and you see the communalities and I've seen this many times when I was sitting with my colleagues from other faiths, whether the priests or imams and when we started talking about our common problems we saw we have very similar problems with our constituencies, and the world is equal. Sheikh? First, I will ask for all of you to pray for innocent people dying everywhere in the world and we don't care about their religion or where they are, just we need all to it, especially in Gaza now when they're facing this mashing of this. They died every day if you turn the TV on and it's just, we hope, to call for ceasefire and just to try a different way of fighting extremism. We're all against extremism. We're all against what happened in 7 October. We're all against it, but we're all against the factor that's innocent people, kids, women, older people, dying, thousands. This is not something any religion can accept it. So we hope all religions, they will stand up and to condemn the killing of innocent people as we stand up and condemn the killing of innocent people anywhere in the world. So please... And to turn the hostages back to the families. Yeah, exactly, but the families sometimes they fight. Sometimes they fight, but they should stand up and to stop anyone, he's really aggressive. What I'm hearing is consensus that, you know, violence in the name of religion is bad. I'd like to talk to, you know, ask you about specifically, you know, especially in the U.S., which has a very obviously advanced, you know, system corporate system about how a business becomes faith-forward in a positive way. Yeah, I mean, building on these comments, you know, like at this forum we've been talking so much about AIs as we talked about and what's interesting to me is that so much the conversation about AIs really about humanity, like what does it mean to be human? And when you think about it's like, you know, we can improve the ways in which we optimize on certain things, but it's faith that really teaches us what it is that we want to optimize. And so businesses to me that are faith-forward are kind of asking both those questions at the same time. But not in a way that creates divisiveness, right? But in a way that actually creates an openness and a tolerance to lots of different answers that people might have about what it is that we want to optimize and how we all maximize a kind of human vision. I think that's a great, you know, because even here we're talking about what's going on, and at the end of the day, if there's a dialogue that could be positive, the dialogue is good, and if the dialogue is negative, and especially at a company, you know, what you don't want is your work is fighting with each other. It's just the truth, the university is true of your friends. But how do we, you know, and so I think that's, there's a roadmap here for how this, you know, we were able to have dialogues and do it in a positive way that actually brings people together. Rabbi, and then Rabbi Eccardinal, you're, you know, you spend a lot of time with specific companies. Who's doing this well? Or generally, what direction, you know, right, I don't want to put anybody on the spot, but you know, you're studying this, and what's a case study or something you've seen that works that people could take away for everybody? No, I think business people are pretty well inspired and motivated when, for example, we draw their attention to the fact that if, for example, we're talking about economics and from our point of view of faith, economics is two ways put together. Eicos, household, nomos, administration. So true economics- Don't mess with people who are fluent in Latin, by the way. This is like, so true economics is the management of the resources of a household to the satisfaction of all members of the household. If this sense is what inspires business, then the aim of business, it's not maximization of profit, it's to manage the resources so all members of the household have their needs taken care of what we may call the common good, right? So true business as economists or economists is the management of resources of the household if it's the earth, all of humanity, if it's whatever. So that is inspiring for some business people to probably accept a paradigm shift where business does not aim at maximizing profit but optimizing gains. When you optimize gains, it makes you pursue whatever but with some other values taken on board. And those are the type of things we seek to promote with a lot of business people and the resonance well with them. And so when we came out for example with that document about the vocation of business leader we said business, what do you do? You just process some raw material that you are not responsible for, you did not create. Here we're sitting behind furniture. Guy created three, he didn't create furniture. It takes business to convert trees into furniture. So business is processed something that already exists. If it's glass, there's crystal sand and business converts that into glass or glasses for our concrete use. So it's good for business people to recognize that they already use raw material for we are not responsible. And that disposes them to also be sharing in whatever they do. So some... Well that's business in the most faith, we're all just borrowing the earth, right? We're all just borrowing what we have. The question is how does faith inspire all of this? These are considerations. Initially it appears to be so remote but when you sit down with business people and talk like that, you're sitting on chairs. What is that? Plastic and iron. Oil, right? Processing to plastic for human use. So business therefore we call that we call business co-creators. They transform the raw material of creation into concrete used for humanity. And that enables them to feel how noble in all their exercises but at the same time how responsible they should be in imitating the goodness of God that bestowed this on humanity. I already see your next book, Business. Business is godliness. We have about four minutes. Maybe I'll see if the room wants to ask a question. We will give it to you for the last question, sir. This is a very naive question and probably altruistic. But going back to the comment first you have belief and then you have belonging. That's true. But is there some way that in a week when you're quite right we've either been talking about AI or been talking about climate and I found myself talking about both. It just seems to me that unless we look at climate as a human problem nothing's going to get done. I think one of the great and extraordinary successes of religion or religious religions is the ability to convene people disparate people around a common goal. I just wonder whether there's some way on a sort of ecumenical level that the religions could come together not to talk about faith. That can come later if you can turn it from belief to belonging from belonging to belief but somehow create an environment where we can learn from the success of religion over many centuries of the ability to convene people and actually start to make a difference on a topic such as climate because it ain't going to get fixed without something along those lines. We'll go right down the line of the final comment. Thirty seconds. That's a very good question. It really speaks to faith and action. How do we use convening to create action? I think you're right because one of the great things about religions it lets you think not only about your life or your 70s, 80 years you're here in this world then let you think about the afterlife you have to think of what's going to happen in 120 years from now and it's exactly what the problem of global warming is all about because you don't have to think of yourself you have to think of your children so here I think the faith can do a lot of things together. Thank you. In our tradition Prophet Muhammad SAW said if you see the end coming and you have a seal in your hand you should put it on. So it's always about hope for the future and when you are a farmer and you put an olive tree you know it will take them a long time to give a fruit so it's always you do it for other generations and I think our religion it's full of like encouraging people to work for the next generations. Professor? So just to clarify so the churches I think the saying is that belonging comes before belief and I think the misperception is that belief comes first and then belonging comes second and so what they're saying is that look you know whether or not you believe in our God you're welcome, you're a part of us you don't have to believe in our God you don't have to believe in any God you're a part of our community and so I do that very convening I think on a weekly basis but you know on this panel and in the report we see all sorts of examples where faith communities are doing that with the private sector with all sorts of other kinds of organizations to solve really complicated problems because I think they have a moral authority to bring people together and convene them in a way that other organizations cannot. That's very curdle. So with particular reference to the issue of ecology you refer to faith leaders have already come together to do that. The patriarch of Constantinople was the one who began interpreting our treatment of everything in the years so abuse of creation and everything and started saying that our conduct has been sinful towards creation. From that it was taken over by the Catholic Church by the Pope who put together a secret call that allowed us to see about creation. Then at a conference in Istanbul the Islamic community tagged on to this and put their support behind this to the point that all the religions galvanized behind this call for the care of creation. So that is already happening it's pushing it's displayed at all the cuffs from 15, 21 which happened in Paris to the subsequent cuffs. The religious groups come together to emphasize our responsibility to care for creation. Well I'm taking a lot out of this panel. Religion can be a unifier and religion can also be a positive force as a business partner which I think is a kind of a new it's probably not a new concept but it's a concept that people are starting to take very seriously and I just if the entire world could talk as respectfully as this panel all coming from different backgrounds and different perspectives we'd be in a very good place I appreciate each of you I appreciate each of you for your leadership and I appreciate WEF for convening this because it's not the kind of panel you have seen probably in previous years so thank you for being part of that history and again thank you all for coming out today we appreciate it.