The Tony Blair Faith Foundation has announced that Bosnian Grand Mufti Mustafa Ceric was one of the speakers invited to the 2010 Beijing Forum. According to the report:
Tony Blair delivered the keynote speech on Sunday at the 2010 Beijing Forum, marking the partnership between Peking University and the Tony Blair Faith Foundation. The Tony Blair Faith Foundation co-sponsored, with Yale University, one of the key themes of the 2010 Beijing Forum, on “Faith and Responsibilities: Spiritual Reflections on Global Issues”. Amongst the speakers invited to the Foundation’s panel were His Eminence the Grand Mufti of Bosnia, Mustafa Ceric; Professor Miroslav Volf of Yale University; Professor Arvind Sharma of McGill University; Professor Monica Toft of Harvard University; and Professor Anantand Rambachan, a member of the Tony Blair Faith Foundation’s Religious Advisory Council….This summer Peking University joined the Tony Blair Faith Foundation’s Faith and Globalisation Initiative which builds partnerships with leading universities on every continent to develop a deeper understanding of the inter-relationship between faith and globalisation. The Initiative aims to help emerging leaders understand how faith can motivate and impact new trends in the modern world and highlights the implications through research and publications. Founding partners of the Foundation’s Faith and Globalisation Initiative are Yale University in the USA, National University of Singapore (NUS), McGill University in Canada, Durham University in the UK, Technologico de Monterrey University in Mexico, the University of Western Australia (UWA), and Peking University in China.
Considered by some to be a leading “liberal” Islamic leader, Mustafa Ceric is tied to the global Muslim Brotherhood through his membership in the European Council for Fatwa and Research (ECFR), headed by Brotherhood leader Youssef Qaradawi and by his participation in the U.K.-based “Radical Middle Way” consisting of a wide range of associated scholars representing the global Muslim Brotherhood. Several earlier posts have discussed Dr. Ceric’s increasing visibility and importance within the global Muslim Brotherhood, noting that Ceric sees himself as a possible future leader of a “European Islam.” Dr. Ceric recently compared the Iranian Revolution with the French Revolution and Iranian media reported that Dr. Ceric recently told former Iranian President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani in a meeting that he considers Iran a “good friend” of his country.” A post from October 2009 discussed his visit to the International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT), an important part of the U.S. and global Muslim Brotherhood.