Interfaith Dialogue (18th March, 2006), Orchard Parade Hotel, Singapore

Pursuant to the Prime Minister's announcement of the formation of a Committee Engagement Programme (CEP) in February 2006, three local Muslim institutions, CCIS, PERDAUS and Darul Arqam, have taken the initiative to launch an inter-faith dialogue.

This dialogue involved the seven major faith groups in Singapore ie. the Catholic Church, Protestant Churches, the Buddhist Federation, the Taoist Mission, the Sikh Community, the Hindu Endowment Board and the Muslim community and NGOs.

The spirit of this dialogue is to be actively involved in giving feedback to the government and discuss alternative ways the CEP could be implemented.

The leaders of these faith groups were expected to be better acquainted with each others' thinking that leads to a better understanding.

Darul Arqam was requested to assist in the organisation of this dialogue at the Orchard Parade Hotel on March 18th 2006.

The half-day closed-door session drew an encouraging 100 representatives from the groups mentioned above.

The event also received very good press coverage with the Suria TV news channel airing reports for two straight days.

The Malay language newspaper, Berita Harian, also had full page coverage of this event on 19th and 20th March.

The Straits Times and Lianhe Zhaobao also covered the event.

Imran Andrew Price