“They are those who have overcome their psychological disabilities more than their physical disabilities and succeeded in displaying some great skills. They are, in fact, children with special skills, not handicapped,” the prince added while speaking at the concluding ceremony for the Prince Sultan bin Salman Qur’an Memorization contest for disabled children in Makkah on April 11.
Prince Salman, while speaking to Arab News, said that the Qur’an Memorization contest for disabled children is a remarkable event. “This is truly a very important event, the event of the disabled children who are now reading the Qur’an and who are now memorizing parts of the Qur’an. It is joyful event for me to attend every time, mainly because to us as Saudis, the Qur’an is really a way of life rather than reading a book. The Qur’an to us is a foundation of our country, it’s a foundation of our humanity and it is the values that the Qur’an preaches are the most important to us in Saudi Arabia.
“Saudi Arabia was founded on values of Islam. Islamic values basically are values that are far reaching in terms of issues of human rights, issues of family, issues of community, issues of economic and social tolerance and issues of equality.
“The world has been looking at Islam from different angles and different perspectives that is not necessarily always in line with what we believe Islam to be,” the prince said.
“Islam is a religion of peace. Islam is a religion for tolerance. Islam is a very joyful religion and I always thought to be a Muslim you must be a happy person.
“Islam is a religion people can not only practice but can think of as a way of life and people in Saudi Arabia believe that the binding agent that brings people together in this country is Islam and it has brought this country together. This very vast and very complex country with multiple communities and colorful cultures is bound by the values of Islam. Values of how people can live with each other and can grow and can prosper.
“What we see today is Saudi Arabia being a country, a very prosperous country, that is growing very, very fast and that Islam enabled the people of this land, the Arabian Peninsula, to spread the light of Islam to the communities of the world. People rarely know that Islam literally conquered, and I use the word in a soft way, the emotions and the spirits of the people peacefully.
“And countries that has the vast majority of Muslims today like Indonesia, China, India and Pakistan are countries that Islam came to through word of mouth, through peaceful means and so too in other parts of the world.
“We are very proud in Saudi Arabia of our multiple culture and very colorful mosaic of demography and heritage and accents and people and languages, but mostly proud of what has been achieved in this country with people of multiple backgrounds and cultures and huge geographic area comprising mostly the Arabian Peninsula brought together long before the discovery of oil under the umbrella of Islamic values.
“This country today, as we see it, is the most prosperous, most secure and most coherent country in the region and we look forward as Saudis to young, middle aged and older people to shape a very bright future, as we are literally and still are working our way through many of our issues in reconciling our heritage and our religion with issues of the future and Islam has never been a stumbling block.
“Islam came to the Arabian Peninsula and most of the great achievement of Muslims happened in these countries after they embraced Islam — scientific, specifically, and cultural.
“Saudi Arabia has been made stronger as a nation because of Islam. We are now probably the most technologically advanced in the Middle East, the largest investor nation in the Middle East, and probably the most developed nation in the region, in the sense of literacy, in the sense of infrastructure development and in the sense of education and so on.
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