Iranian cleric Hujjat al-Islam wal-Muslimin Dr. Seyyed Taha Merqati Khoei says: My suggestion for the conference is that we should come like UNESCO, which has paid special attention to education in order to raise the level of knowledge of human societies.

 The full speech is as follows:
 
In the Name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful
And we seek God’s help
I consider it my responsibility to congratulate all Muslims on the birth anniversary of the Great Prophet of Islam and to express my gratitude to the participants in the 37th International Islamic Unity Conference for providing me with this opportunity to speak about a number of issues in this conference as distinguished professors will present articles to this meeting. Let me tell you, one of the features of this conference and the previous conference was that the honorable secretary general and his deputies in these scientific meetings focused on practical issues facing Islamic societies, and we hope that these scientific meetings will help solve the problems facing all Muslims, both Sunni and Shia brothers; I have chosen one of the themes of the conference, and in the minutes that I am addressing the audience, I intend to present some points in the field in order to prepare the ground for the scientific articles that are to be presented. Among the main themes of this conference are actually Islamic unity and countering terrorists. This hideous phenomenon needs to be in field study. Terror and terrorism are the issues which have plagued the world. In the past periods globally, we have had two phenomena in Islamic countries, which have been the birthplace of such an ideology. This phenomenon was supported through other countries, and it created a big problem for the world and Islamic countries. Al-Qaeda's birthplace was Afghanistan, and that of Daesh was Iraq. By examining this issue and the emergence and development of this and the spread of this, we come to the fact that these deviant thoughts that lead to violence were established in two columns and on two bases, one was livelihood poverty and one was cultural poverty among Islamic societies. That is, those who had planned the affairs, so to speak, they chose their infantry from Islamic countries and among Muslims those who either had excessive financial needs or were living in cultural poverty due to ignorance and, in short, lack of knowledge of scientific reality. Although the group was created in Afghanistan and from Daesh, from all over the world, even European countries, people who were very fanatical and ignorant of religious issues, with an ignorant fanatical belief in this great army that arose and ruled for a while, and killed Muslim and...
non-Muslim Shias and Sunnis, with the most heinous behaviors that tarnished the name of Islam and created a serious problem for the world. Therefore, these two phenomena warned we Muslims of all sects and religions that we must try hard to raise the literacy of the Islamic society and the culture of the Islamic society and try to reduce the level of poverty of the Muslims, so I will give an example from the past history, which does not belong to our time. In the incident of Karbala, Muslims know that the Prophet's son, in fact, started corruption in order to deal with oppression, and on the 10th of Muharram, he faced the 30,000-strong army of Obaidullah, which was organized on order of Yazid, and with the most heinous and severe inhuman act martyred the Prophet's son and his companions. When we examine this event from a historical point of view, we see that Obaidullah, who used to be in charge of Basra province, and when he was in Yazd, after writing a letter to Imam Hussain (AS) through the Kufians and inviting him to Kufa, he felt threatened. And he chose Ubaidullah while maintaining his position in the Emirate of Kufa. Ubaidullah took advantage of these two weak points of the Muslims and placed a 30,000-strong army against the small group of Imam Hussain's (AS) army and martyred the Imam, his children, his family, and his companions. One of the two points, mentioned above, was the poverty of livelihood, taken as advantage by Obaidullah to attract ignorant and needy citizens of the city of Kufa through injecting money and material facilities and by pampering them. The people, who were pampered, stepped forward on the Day of Ashura and stood in front of then Imam. The other point was ignorance and prejudice: The small group that took part in war and martyred the Imam, were in fact following the path of Khawarej. Martyrdom of the Imam in the altar of worship and when the news of the martyrdom of Imam Ali (AS) was published, a group in Shamat (Syria) and other places said, "Does Ali (AS) pray as well?" So, this is also a historical example that we must now express this among all Muslims as a historical phenomenon and fight against these two extreme weaknesses; that is, if today we do not think about removing cultural poverty, raising awareness and improving knowledge, such cases like al-Qaeda and Daesh will definitely be repeated in the future. My suggestion for the conference is that we should come like UNESCO, which has paid special attention to education in order to raise the level of knowledge of human societies. In Islamic countries, let's create a UNESCO of Islamic countries and try to raise knowledge level of children, young adults and youth.
Doing this today is definitely better than doing it tomorrow; that is, the longer this work is delayed, the more deviant and dangerous thoughts that threaten the world and in the name of Islam will grow. This work will be done. It will not be this far. These days we hear the news of people burning the Quran and insulting it. Imagine the culture and civilization of Sweden. They come and insult the beliefs of Muslims. This is done by an Iraqi. It happened by someone who is on the list of the Muslim group. This is the unawareness and ignorance of these people who can be influenced by those who want to challenge the Islamic society. I hope that this conference and our future conferences will focus on those things, which are the problem of the general Muslims and causes Muslims to be slandered and creates a problem for Islamic and non-Islamic countries. It is hoped that respected professors in this conference will discuss this in more depth and provide practical solutions for Islamic countries and communities. At the end of my speech, I should say that I consider it necessary to have the Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) in the UNESCO project and my education plan. The governments may not be able to enter directly to improve education due to a number of restrictions but public institutions can do this. It is hoped that we will all feel responsibility and get involved in this matter.
Peace be upon you and God's mercy and blessings be upon you