CAIRO, May 20: Delegates from Muslim nations opened a conference here on Monday aimed at correcting what Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and others said were attempts to distort the image of Islam since the Sept 11 attacks.

Egyptian Prime Minister Atef Ebeid told the conference on Mubarak’s behalf that the September attacks “had negative repercussions on Islam’s image in the world, (...) and some media have managed to make a link between Islam and terrorism”.

But Mubarak’s speech said the media accounts “overlooked that the main reasons for these events are mainly due to a strengthening of feelings of despair, caused by political, economic and social factors.”

He did not name the media he was criticizing at the conference dubbed “The Reality of Islam in a Vulnerable World”, which is attended by ministers of religious affairs and other religion experts from more than 75 Arab and other Islamic countries as well as from European nations.

The remarks by Mubarak also called for making a distinction between legitimate resistance to occupation and the violence carried out by the occupier, in an apparent reference to Israel.

“The difference must be clear between he who uses his legitimate right to resist in order to get rid of the foreign occupation and he who commits acts of violence to terrorize a people in order to occupy its territory by force,” according to his speech.

Egypt’s Religious Affairs Minister Mahmud Hamdi Zakzuk said the conference aimed “at studying objectively the real image of Islam and fight attempts to distort this image.

“The events which happened in September negatively influenced Islam and Muslims,” Zakzuk said, also complaining that Islam and terror had been unfairly linked.

After some Arabs were blamed for the attacks by hijacked aircraft on buildings in New York and Washington, “Arabs and Muslims find themselves accused of encouraging terrorism,” the minister said.

“As Muslims we call for peace, security, stability for us and the whole world,” Zaqzuq said.—AFP