Women, religion conference held

A conference, “Religion’s attitude towards women”, was held at the Irshad hotel of Baku Monday as part of the Caucasus action, “16 days of activity against gender violence”. The organizers of the conference were the “Birlik” Caucasus Youth Center, the Women’s Consultative Prophylactics Center, the Youth Assistance Foundation, and the Pluralism Institute. The gathering aimed to discuss all aspects of violence against women stemming from erroneous presentation of religious teachings and to determine ways of joint solution to outstanding problems.

The participants underscored that misunderstanding and neglecting moral values in society has led to aspiration to a too free lifestyle. As a result, the attitude towards religion has changed. Misunderstanding and distortion of religion has been the prime reason for violence against women, disparaging the gender sex in family and society and contradicting religious teachings.

Attending the conference were chairman of the State Committee on Religious Entities Rafiq Aliyev, representatives from the Ministry of Youth, Sports and Tourism, the Ministry of Public Health, the Academy of Sciences, youth and women NGOs, and three key religious confessions, Islam, Christianity and Judaism.*