Moderation in Religious Discourse in Light of Rules of International Law

Religion in its wider sense has been found to affect the general life of the individual and the society to find a common ground to whoever believes in the peaceful coexistence for the elevation of communities. However, the problem arising from the application of religious concepts lies in fanaticism concerning the reading and interpretation of religious texts in their narrow denotative meaning. It lies, moreover, in the projection of the surface meaning of these texts on the practical reality leading to a great gap between the intent of the religious text and the practical reality, notwithstanding the fact that human communities pass through continuous development on the technological, economic and legal levels. This would lead to a gap between the philosophy to be applied from the religious text and the legal text which seeks to keep pace with the public rapid developments. In this light, the study aims at highlighting the effect of religious extremism on the security and legal reality to focus on the reflections of extremism on laws in general and rules of the international law in particular. It aims, moreover, at investigating the mechanisms of the international law with a focus on the most important international accords that addressed the concept of moderation and renounced religious extremism to highlight the implications of these accords in the international peace and security. To achieve these objectives, the inductive descriptive approach is adopted focusing on the structural aspects of legal texts and the content of relevant international accords to analyze their content. The analytical practical approach is also utilized depending on the analysis of national and international legal texts to be compared with the practical reality. The data for analysis are collected from international agreements and the analysis of national legal texts to be compared with the practical experiments and applications of relevant issues. The findings of the study include; first, the attempt to arrive at a clear picture of the role of the international law in confronting cases of religious extremism to foster rules of moderation in all international and national laws. Second, when a suitable atmosphere is provided for religious extremism, this will definitely be reflected on coexistence within states and, as a result, on the bilateral coexistence. This, in its turn, will lead to affecting the international peace and security. Third, an emphasis should be placed on the educational teaching curricula and the audiovisual religious programs to be evaluated within an international working mechanism under the supervision of the UNESCO. Forth, the activities of all religious and ideological institutions should be monitored to be directed in such a way that suits the dissemination of moderation and peaceful coexistence