Dialogue of Declarations II

Declarations are easy to sign and hard to implement. Marrakesh, Bahrain, Makkah, Abu Dhabi, Bukhara — an accumulating body of statements from Muslim-majority institutions on coexistence and the rights of religious minorities, each significant, none self-executing. This convening took them as a starting point rather than an achievement, and spent its time on the gap between the text and the practice.

The framework is the Bukhara Declaration, adopted in 2022 and unusual in stating its commitments in secular, rights-based language that holds across belief systems rather than resting on the theology of any one of them. That makes it usable by a government official, a police commander, and an imam in the same conversation, which is the point.

The design was deliberately small-group and mixed-sector: government officials, religious leaders, scholars, law enforcement professionals, educators, and civil society practitioners in sustained discussion rather than in sequence at a podium. The recurring question was the practical one — how does this work in practice? — and the answer increasingly runs through professional education. Cross-Cultural Religious Literacy (CCRL) is offered as a foundational course and then as profession-specific tracks, so that what a declaration promises reaches the people whose daily decisions determine whether it is true.

The convening also produced a durable arrangement: a five-year memorandum of understanding between LYNC and the Institute for Strategic and Regional Studies. Uzbekistan served here as both host and case study, having adopted a State Policy Concept on Religion in February 2025 — a country testing in public whether the movement from declaration to implementation can be made routine.