The Dalai Lama, Tibet’s exiled spiritual leader, has warned against portraying Islam as a religion of violence, saying Muslims have been wrongly demonized in the West since the Sept. 11 attacks.
Promoting religious tolerance, the world’s most influential Buddhist leader said Sunday that talk of “a clash of civilizations between the West and the Muslim world is wrong and dangerous.” Terrorist attacks have distorted people’s views of Islam, making them believe it is an extremist faith rather than one based on compassion, the Dalai Lama told a press conference in the Indian capital.
All religions have extremists and “it is wrong to generalize (about Muslims),” the 71-year-old spiritual leader said. “They (terrorists) cannot represent the whole system,” he said.
Rick McCharles 