Islam inherently promotes peace and mutual understanding, argued the scholar Shaykh Abdullah Bin Bayyah at a special roundtable conversation hosted by the Foreign Policy Institute. Bin Bayyah, listed by the Muslim 500 as the 9th most influential Muslim in the world, discussed how his organization, the Forum for Promoting Peace in Muslim Societies, uses Islamic traditions to challenge the view that religion is often used to justify rather than solve problems of violence.

Bin Bayyah’s forum uses a methodology based on Islamic texts and traditions and refutes the argument that Islam promotes violence by showing that it encourages peace.  Forum scholars also challenge other thinkers, who claim that Islam does not encourage peace, by teasing out the lack of logic in their claims. The forum is notably in favor of protecting minority rights and supports equality and notions of modern citizenship. The works of Bin Bayyah and other forum scholars aim to explain how Islamic thought largely supports modern, progressive goals.

Taken from

http://events.sais-jhu.edu/#promoting-peace-in-muslim-societies