The cry of "Never Again" has failed in Bosnia, as you all know. Once again an intolerable affront to the human conscience has occurred: genocide. I have lived it. And I have survived it in order to testify before you today that the law is not in the books; the law is in the heart, and the heart is in the soul, and the soul is in the trust, and the trust is in God...

Dr. Mustafa Ceric, former Grand Mufti of Sarajevo, Bosnia

Dr. Mustafa Ceric is Grand Mufti Emeritus of Bosnia-Herzegovina and is currently serving as President of World Bosniak Congress. Dr. Mustafa Ceric is a member many organizations, including, the Interreligious Council of Bosnia-Herzegovina, the Council of 100 Leaders of the World Economic Forum, World Conference of Religion & Peace, the European Council of Religious Leaders, t the Fiqh Academy in Mecca, International Commission for Peace Research, UNESCO, Advisory Council of the Tony Blair Faith Foundation. Dr. Ceric was the co-recipient of the 2003 UNESCO Felix Houphouet-Boigny Peace Prize. In 2010, he received the King Abdullah I Bin Al-Hussein International Award.

Address to World Summit 2015, Seoul, Korea, August 27 to 31, 2015

Mr. Moderator,brothers and sisters, ladies and gentlemen, lovers of peace and development, I am greatly honored by the invitation of Dr. Thomas Walsh, the president of Universal Peace Federation, to attend this World Summit 2015 in Seoul, South Korea.

This great city and this great country of the East Asian nation on the southern Korean Peninsula is rightly entitled to the world summit of peace and development. Indeed, this universal gathering for peace in Seoul is not only very timely but also very spiritually and morally necessary, as we are trying to figure out who we are and what we should do here and now on this planet Earth.

I know, as you do, that it would offend us all, it would hurt our humanity, if someone were to come from outside our planet Earth to tell us that we look like beasts and that we behave the way that beasts in the jungle behave.

But we could say to the one who tells us that we humans look like beasts in the jungle: No, you are wrong. We are not beasts that kill each other in the jungle. We are humans who love each other on this planet! Here is our proof in the city of Seoul. Here we are united in a big human soul for peace. Don't you see, my friends? We have come here because we love each other for the sake of our planet, where we like to live in peace like humans, not like beasts. Thus, we don't want to be called beasts. We want to be called humans, indeed.

But what if our friend, the stranger from another planet, asked us as we claim to be humans—what if he asked us about the current not one but many wars in our world which he sees with his naked eye, these bloody wars among humans that look even worse than killing among beasts in the jungle?

What if our friend from another planet confronted us with the truth that we humans, who don’t want to be called beasts—we humans know how to talk about peace, but we don't know how to stop making wars?

What if he reminded us that there is a big discrepancy between talking about peace and making war?

What if our friend from another world told us that we humans are big hypocrites who don't know how to tell the truth but know how to manipulate the lie?

These are hard questions for us all, aren’t they? So, what can we, humans and not beasts, tell our friend from another planet who asks us these questions? Each of us should try his/her best to answer them.

As you know, I come from the Balkans, which have witnessed the worst war since the Second World War. The cry of "Never Again" has failed in Bosnia, as you all know. Once again an intolerable affront to the human conscience has occurred: genocide. I have lived it. And I have survived it in order to testify before you today that the law is not in the books; the law is in the heart, and the heart is in the soul, and the soul is in the trust, and the trust is in God, the Loving, the Merciful, the Caring, the Good.

Thus, I would like to ask our friend from another planet to tell us how we can find our heart in our soul; how we can get our soul back to our trust; how we can earn our trust in God, who is watching us as we humans apparently are losing our mind, our heart, our soul, our trust in each other?

Yes, indeed, we desperately need help, because we are becoming helpless and hopeless.

We need someone to tell us how to help the little Syrian girl who is crying in tears and blood before our naked eyes!

We need someone to guide us how to give hope to a little boy who is sailing in the ocean for his safety from endless wars!

We need someone from heaven to soften our human hearts which seem to be hardened like rocks, or worse than rocks. There are rocks out of which rivers gush; there are rocks which split asunder so that water flows from them; indeed, there are rocks which fall down before Merciful God, but some human hearts are harder than rocks. These hard human hearts make hard wars.

But, there are human hearts in the Universal Peace Federation which are softer than cotton and sweeter than flowers!

These hearts not only talk about peace!

These hearts make peace and work against war!

These hearts are here today!

And I am one of them!

Indeed, I am proud to be one of them here in the great city of Seoul. 

Thank you and God bless you!

To return to the World Summit Program and Presentations, click here.