CAIRO - Muslim clerics across the Middle East used their Friday sermons to discuss tolerance and call on Christians and Muslims to unite against terrorism. Egypt's Grand Mufti Ali Gomaa the second highest religious figure in the country talked about the story of the birth of Christ and the co-existence between Islam and Christianity in his sermon. "Some people tried to disturb our joy with Christmas by this heinous crime that has caused grief across the country," Gomaa told thousands gathered at a Cairo mosque. "Such crimes, which do not differentiate between Muslim and Christian or between a man and a woman, were rejected by the Prophet (Mohamed)," he said during the sermon broadcast on TV in order to reach wider range of people across the country. He also asked people to pray for God to "spare us disorder and chaos." Earlier this week, the Ministry of Religious Endowments instructed preachers across the country to use the Friday sermon to renounce violence, condemn the attack, and talk about tolerance of religions. "Different religions do not lead to violence or persecution between the two parties because all share the same community," one imam in Cairo said. In southern Egypt, preachers said that the attack aimed at provoking sectarianism as a pretext for foreign interference in the country's internal affairs. The Doha-based Sheikh Youssef el- Qaradawi, meanwhile, stressed that "those behind the blast have harmed Islam, whether they were Muslims or not". In Saudi Arabia, the Grand Imam of the Prophet's Mosque, Sheikh Salah Badr, described the blast as an act of injustice and aggression that is prohibited by Islamic law. Badr told Muslim worshippers in the mosque in Medina that despite progress and development, the world has descended into violence, conflicts and wars that have diminished values like tolerance and peaceful coexistence. "Before I congratulate you for Christmas, I want to mourn our children in Alexandria and in many countries where they have been martyred: innocents who haven't done anything," Pope Shenouda III, told the Christmas Eve Mass at Cairo's main cathedral.
