Culture ministers of Islamic countries concluded in Muscat yesterday their ninth conference under the motto : towards a developmental moderate culture to promote Islamic communities. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia's delegation to the gathering was led by Dr. Adel bin Zaid Altoraifi, the Minister of Culture and Information. Addressing the closing session, Haithm bin Tareq Al Saeed, the Minister of Heritage and Culture of Oman, urged the ASCESCO to follow-up the implementation of Muscat Declaration. He also called for continuing efforts within the executive plan of the initiative of the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques for dialogue among followers of religions and culture to present the ideal profile of the moderate Islamic thinking and culture as well as the call of King Abdullah bin Abdullah International Center for dialogue among followers of religions and cultures for more cooperation with ESCESCO. The participants called on the member states to organize the OIC first festival for cultural expression on the sidelines of the Islamic conference session in coordination with Islamic culture capitals and the festival's host country respectively. They also decided to accredit the western media concepts on Islam to be inserted in schools curricula aiming to reduce their negative impact. The next meeting of the Islamic culture ministers will be held in Sudan in the second half of November 2017 and chose the Sudanese city of Sinnar as capital of Islamic culture. The next session will be held in Tunisia with Tunis as capital of the Islamic culture in the second half of November 2019 while the Bahraini city of Al-Muharraq will host the Islamic culture title in 2018 instead of Al-Manama. The executive office of the ninth session was formed from Oman as president, Tunisia and Benin and Malaysia as deputy presidents and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia as rapporteur.
