Al-Azhar Observatory for Combating Extremism received on Wednesday a delegation from the Indonesian Embassy in Cairo, which included Ms. Dian Ratri Astuti, First Secretary and Head of the Political Department as well as Mr. Asif Saifuddin Halim, Founder and Director of the Amanat al-Ummah Institute in Surabaya and Mr. Masoud Saeed, Director of Department of Postgraduate Studies and Research at the Islamic University of Malang, East Java. The aim of the visit was to learn about the role of the Observatory in combating radical ideologies and its experience in combating extremism, and to discuss the possibility of concluding cooperation between the two parties.
The Observatory’s supervisors reviewed the mechanism of work within the Observatory’s 15 multilingual Units through a detailed presentation of the tasks performed by researchers with regard to refuting and correcting misconceptions and misinformation spread by terrorist groups and combating Islamophobia and hate speech against Muslims in some western societies.
For his part, Mr. Asif Saifuddin Halim praised the important role played by the Al-Azhar Observatory in combating extremist ideas and spreading the values of tolerance around the world, noting that the Observatory has become a role model for the world in the field of combating extremism, and that Indonesia is looking forward to opening prospects for cooperation with the Observatory through its Ministry of Foreign Affairs in order to import Al-Azhar's pioneering experience in this field.