Organizers had high hopes for last week’s World Religions conference, which aimed to combat the increasingly negative perceptions surrounding religions. However, the event fell far short of expectations according to most attendees.

The event was organized by McGill Professor Arvind Sharman, and brought together speakers of all faiths to discuss the role of religion in today’s world and to promote the adoption of a United Nations-style Universal Declaration of Human Rights by the world’s religions.

Dr. Anis Malik Thoha, an assistant professor from the International Islamic University of Malaysia, agreed in his speech Wednesday that different religions must communicate with each other, but added that he did not see this happening effectively in the near future. He later spoke about the low turnout to the event.

“Unfortunately, the organizer didn’t organize the program properly…. so not enough people showed up,” said Thoha. “When I was in Japan, in Tokyo at a similar event, there [was] a larger number of people, so we [had] more interaction.”

Less than eight people attended Dr. Thoha’s session, which was given in a room built for over 100.

Dr. Seyyed Hossein Nasr, an Islamic studies scholar, also spoke to a sparse audience.

“Considering how famous a scholar he is, it was fairly poorly attended,” said Heather Empey, a fourth year PhD student at the McGill Institute of Islamic Studies. “It was maybe a quarter full.”

Empey added that she thought the conference organizers aimed too high with their goals.

“I think that the objective was too lofty and too comprehensive,” she said. “An intelligent public could handle a more in-depth talk on religion. It was good intentioned, but what was the point? It would be better to have a more honest, more real conversation about these things.”

Empey said that she found the conference was preaching to the converted, as the people who were willing to sit down in dialogue with other religions are not the people who needed to go to a conference to be encouraged to do so.

Professor Arvind Sharman, chair of the organizing committee for the conference, said that although there were problems, many of them were out of his control – particularly the low attendance.

“This is something I naturally regret; that there were not enough people,” he said, “but it is something over which we have very little control – people vote with their feet.”

Amy Wanounou, a Masters student from York University in Toronto, was also critical of the event.

“I’m a little disappointed,” she said. “I thought it would be more of a critical, academic look at the real issues that need to be discussed, as opposed to what I found, which was a lot of great rhetoric about how we all need to interface and dialogue”

Ms. Wanounou, who is studying female suicide bombers, was hoping to find information that might help in her own studies. However, what she found was not so useful.

Echoing Dr. Thoha’s sentiments, Wanounou said that the event suffered from poor organization.

“A lot of people haven’t even shown up for their talks – which was a little disappointing since they were the ones that were planning on talking about the specific studies they’ve done,” Wanounou said.

Sharman regretted that some speakers did not show up, but explained that the problem was unavoidable with such stringent border security and the inevitable complexity of travel.

“A person coming from Egypt,” he said, “flew to America to visit his daughter first, and then came to Canada. But the US authorities would not let him leave [because of] some problem with him landing in USA and not going straight to Canada.”

Sharman took issue with Wanounou’s assertion that the conference lacked critical academic analysis.

“It was not meant to be a purely academic conference. It had a strong academic component, but it was not meant to be a purely academic conference,” Sharman said. “Anyone who heard [a number of the speakers] would realize that it had high intellectual content. I would disagree … that there was no academic treatment of the issues. This was not the sole concern of the conference. But that was by design, and not by accident.”

He went on to explain that the conference did accomplish more than rhetoric.

“The reason why we proposed the draft of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was to provide a basis for these religions to come and work together,” Sharman said. “The draft is a concrete thing, something to work on – how can that be denied?”

Sharman was hopeful that similar conferences could be organized in the future.

“If we don’t have this very conference again, we are sure to have a conference which is very close to it. . . the Parliament of World Religions, which will meet in 2009.”

-additional reporting by Kayvon Afshari