Greeting words of the Chairman of Russia Muftis Council mufti sheikh Ravil Gaynutdin at the opening of the 10th Muslim Forum in Moscow:

"Dear brothers and sisters, ladies and gentlemen!

Let me welcome you at the 10th anniversary International Muslim Forum "Mission of religion and the responsibility of its followers before the challenge of modernity". I would like to thank all of you who showed their interest and answered our call to take part in this remarkable event. We are very grateful to our partners that we enjoyed organizing this forum with.

I would like to specifically outline one moment: this annual Muslim Forum was initially organized as a live ground for sharing opinions, for outlining problems and seeking ways to solve them. At our International Muslim Forum, Muslim scholars and intellectual elite, community leaders and public officials have equal rights to approach united the key issues of modernity. Our main task here is to work out the formulas and ideologemes that will ultimately promote unity in our society, integration of various ethnicities and religions and socialization of the Muslim Ummah.

The mission of religion, and thus the role of religious organizations in the modern world is on the rise. Our task is to turn quantitative indicators into qualitative, so that religious organizations and scholars would successfully cure social problems, so that the civic engagement in our congregations would take positive forms, so that peace and good neighbourliness became constants of our lives. We agree with the definition of religious leaders given by President Vladimir Putin: "Clergymen are people with moral authority that should serve the best of reasons; they must be well-educated and learned, able to give clear and canonically flawless judgment on the pressing issues and challenges of modernity."

And that is why we should, during this forum, work out such formulas that would, first of all, promote preservation of peace and good neighbourliness. I am sure that not only religious leaders and intellectuals but also public servants will consider these ideas and conclusions, and that together we shall develop new, or modernize the existing mechanisms of cooperation between religion, state and society."