Muhammad bin Abdul Karim Issa

In July 2022, the custodian of the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud appointed Dr Al-Issa the Khateeb of Hajj 1443 Hijri to deliver the hajj sermon from the pulpit of Masjid Nimra. The Hajj is the largest gathering of Muslims in the world and Dr Al-Issa used the opportunity to advocate a moderate message of Islam promoting harmony and compassion.

He called on Muslims to avoid all that leads to "dissent, animosity, or division" and stressed that "our interactions are dominated by harmony and compassion”.[27] His address further asked Muslims "not to give any mind to those who are insolent, have ulterior motives, or seek to obstruct him" in a bid to promote tolerance and understanding. Dr Al-Issa underscored that Islam had an encompassing spirit whose goodness extended to all of humanity

Dr Issa leads a delegation of Muslim leaders to Auschwitz Memorial in January 2020.

As the head of the MWL and a key Muslim voice for interfaith peace and coexistence, Dr Al-Issa collaborated with the American Jewish Committee (AJC) to lead an historic delegation of senior Muslim scholars and leaders to the Auschwitz concentration camp in January 2020.[28] The delegation consisted of 62 Muslims, including 25 prominent religious leaders, from 28 countries.

The visit aimed at condemning the atrocities carried out against the Jews during the World War II and expressing solidarity in standing against oppressors. AJC CEO David Harris said Dr Al-Issa's visit was the “most senior Islamic leadership delegation to ever visit Auschwitz or any Nazi German death camp”. Harris called the visit a "direct rebuttal to the extremists who threaten us all".

Dr Al-Issa led a similar delegation to the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum again in January 2022.

Dr Al-Issa at the Forum on Common Values among Religious Followers

Under Dr Al-Issa's guidance, MWL arranged a discussion and debate forum in Riyadh in May 2022 titled "Forum on Common Values among Religious Followers" that brought together senior Muslim scholars and leaders as well as leadership and scholars of other religions from across the world.[29]

The forum was a key initiative in bringing leadership and followers of various religions together to discuss, appreciate and promote values that bind all religions. Combining common religious principles and international conventions, the forum issued a declaration of “Common Human Values” wherein participants agreed to affirm the centrality of religion in every civilization due to its influence in “shaping the ideas of human societies”.

The participants shunned denounced the idea of an 'inevitable clash of civilizations' due to religious issues. The forum underscored that attempts to gain religious, cultural, political and economic advantages without respect for rights or ethics, and through forms of extremism, arrogance and racism, must be opposed. One of the key successes of the forum was religious leaders agreeing that it was uncalled for to link religion and malpractices of some of its followers, and that religion must not be employed for worldly purposes.

The event was hailed as a landmark gathering of religious leadership from around the world and crucial to scaling efforts for peacebuilding and interfaith harmony. It was also cited as an effective initiative for engaging conflict parties, addressing grievances, and promote understanding on both sides of the political and religious divides.

Dr Al-Issa was also instrumental in arranging an historic gathering of Iraqi religious leadership in the holy city of Makkah that aimed at promoting greater understanding and initiating comprehensive dialogue between the differing adherents of Islam.[30] Named "Forum of Iraqi References", the August 2021 event focused on discussing and developing frameworks on the roles of scholars in combatting sectarianism and religious extremism, promoting intra-faith coexistence, and providing support to Iraqi government efforts to achieve a lasting peace. At the end of the conference, participants agreed to denounce sectarianism and urged coexistence, moderation, mutual respect and tolerance. They also called for “opening constructive dialogue channels” among the clerics to deal with various issues.

Dr Issa welcomes delegates at the Afghanistan conference in Makkah in June 2021

In June 2021, Dr Al-Issa and the Muslim World League spearheaded a meeting of religious and political leadership from Afghanistan and Pakistan in the holy city of Makkah that devised a roadmap for attaining lasting peace in the war-torn country.[31]

Following a full-day conference, an accord was signed that defined religious parameters to achieve a just and comprehensive peace and reconciliation process in Afghanistan in line with Islamic principles.

Noor-ul-Haq Qadri, then federal Minister for Religious Affairs and Inter-faith Harmony in Pakistan, and Mohammad Qasim Halimi, then minister of Hajj and Religious Affairs of Afghanistan, signed the agreement.

Dr Al-Issa had said that the conference had highlighted the strong resolve "of our brothers in the meeting to advance peace in Afghanistan".

The Charter of Makkah, endorsed in May 2019, was an effort led by the Muslim World League under Dr Al-Issa. The Charter was formulated to create a pan-Islamic set of principles that support anti-extremism, religious and cultural diversity, tolerance and legislation against hate and violence.[32]

The document was declared at the end of the four-day conference organized by the Muslim World League in Makkah. It was approved by Islamic leaders of 139 countries and signed by around 1,200 prominent Muslim figures.

At the conference, more than 1,000 religious scholars representing 128 countries discussed ways to come up with a comprehensive plan to address sectarianism and extremism within Islam, and stressed the need to create effective channels of communication between the different schools of Islam.

Participants of the Faith for Our Planet Workshop in Islamabad at the end of the session

Early in 2022, Dr Al-Issa laid the foundation of Faith For Our Planet, a global inter-faith coalition of environmentalists, religious leaders bureaucrats, politicians, and researchers. FFOP's aim is to mobilize the influence of faith and faith leaders to address the increasing threat to the planet posed by climate change. In FFOP, Dr Al-Issa envisions providing the world with an influential platform where faiths, faith leaders and faith communities can come together to find ways for climate change mitigation and for preservation of our planet.

In this regard, FFOP began a series of workshops in June 2022, with the first workshop - Pakistan: United for Shared Responsibility - being held in Islamabad on June13 and 14 in collaboration with Iqbal International Institute of Research and Dialogue at IIUI, RSPN, and ifees.ecoislam .[33] The agenda of the workshop attended by leading clerics, academics and community welfare leaders from across Pakistan was to analyze the effects on environment already caused by climate change and discuss how faith could play an instrumental role in environmental preservation and climate change reversal.

The workshop was followed by a youth workshop that trained youngsters on how they could play a concrete role in environment preservation and the ways they could create community-wide awareness about the perils of climate degradation.