The UAE is to host a major religious conference addressing fraternity, tolerance and co-existence.
The two-day event – Renewing Religious Discourse – is being organised by the Mohamed bin Zayed University for Humanities and will be staged on November 9 and 10, Abu Dhabi Media Office reported on Thursday.
Scholars and experts from around the globe will attend the academic conference to discuss renewing religious discourse, principles of moderation and equality, and promoting the values of human fraternity, tolerance and co-existence, which the UAE adopts.
The rejection of violence and hatred is expected to among the conference themes.
Mohamed bin Zayed University for Humanities was established in 2020 and will offer bachelor's, master's and doctoral degrees in social studies, humanities and philosophy.
The conference, meanwhile, is being held under the patronage of Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed, Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Co-operation, and will be chaired by Islamic scholar Sheikh Abdallah bin Bayyah. The Mauritanian academic has served as head of the UAE's Fatwa Council and is also on the "supreme academic council" of the university.
The UAE has long embraced ideals of tolerance and many faiths are free to worship in the country.
Pope Francis made a historic visit to the UAE in 2019 – the first by a pontiff to the Arabian Peninsula – where he gave a public mass in Abu Dhabi for Catholic worshippers.
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The government has taken an increasingly tough line against companies that fail to pay employees on time. Three years ago, the Cabinet passed a decree allowing the government to halt the granting of work permits to companies with wage backlogs.
The new measures passed by the Cabinet in 2016 were an update to the Wage Protection System, which is in place to track whether a company pays its employees on time or not.
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Community volunteers have swung into action delivering food packages and toiletries to the men.
When provisions are distributed, the men line up in long queues for packets of rice, flour, sugar, salt, pulses, milk, biscuits, shaving kits, soap and telecom cards.
Volunteers from St Mary’s Catholic Church said some workers came to the church to pray for their families and ask for assistance.
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“Especially in this year of tolerance we consider ourselves privileged to be able to lend a helping hand to our needy brothers in the Actco camp," Father Lennie Connully, parish priest of St Mary’s.
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