"Dialogue"

Chimkent, South Kazakstan
E-mail: [email protected]
Contact Name: Igor Savin

Center for Religious Tolerance Project

NGO "Dialogue" from Chimkent, South Kazakstan in cooperation with local scholars, teachers and community activists is looking for collaboration and financial support for creating a special center for religious tolerance popularization among the population in South Kazakstan,  a region with multiethnic demography and frontiers between Kazakstan and Uzbekistan.

In summer of 2000 there was aggravation of the geopolitical situation on the frontier of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan.  The population of Kazakhstan is generally religiously illiterate due to the absence of true information about the religion in the Soviet period. Ignorance of the fundamentals of the world's main religions (either new or traditional) gives rise to religious intolerance, unjustified mutual aggression and conflict. The same reality greatly complicates not only cultural collaboration and mutual penetration of ethnic population groups, but actually stops the forming of healthy modern civil society in Kazakhstan. This problem is widespread among the diverse interests of the Central Asian region, and religious illiteracy allows the extremism to spread under religious slogans that are prevalent among regional populations.

In consequence of this situation, our initiative group, uniting scientists, mass media, NGOs, representatives of force structures, considers that it necessary and timely to carry out complex measures for creating a compact and permanently working, effective system of religious enlightenment. This system should promote the humanization of public relations, confirmation of religious tolerance in the society, mutual penetration of cultures and accordingly the consolidation of all citizens of Kazakhstan.

In the capacity of practical action the NGO "Dialogue" proposes a project focused on the creation of a special center for religious tolerance through a combination of approaches from mass media, teaching, NGO grassroots activity and mutual form. Interested people are welcome to learn more details about this project.

Last updated:    April 2001

For further information on Central Asian NGOs see also Civil Society in Central Asia (CCSI, Central Asia-Caucasus Institute of Johns Hopkins University, and University of Washington Press, 1999).

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