People must read to understand tolerance – UAE minister

starts with reading a book and understanding what is unknown, a United Arab Emirates (UAE) minister said recently.

During the opening ceremony of the 10th Emirates Airline Festival of Literature on March 1, Minister of State for Tolerance Sheikh Nahyan bin Mubarak Al Nahyan said that, to understand the true meaning of tolerance, people must be willing to “open the books we haven’t read.”

“Be willing to read books, comprehend them and appreciate what we read,” he told a crowd of authors and delegates.

“We are here because we value the ways in which words come together to create meaning,” Al Nahyan said.

“Words enable us to express our thoughts. The words must be the right ones in [the] right places,” he added.

“We all know the immense dif and putting them in the right places, so they present thoughts with accuracy, style, power and excel in tolerable rustle with words and meanings,” the minister said.

Tolerance is demonstrated best when readers engage in the worlds of different authors, according to Al Nahyan.

He cited the diverse population of the UAE, saying that tolerance was embedded and introduced by the country’s leaders, led by the UAE’s late founder Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan.

“Our success relied on the spirit of tolerance inspired by leaders who have encouraged us to take understanding what we don’t know about other people: their thoughts, cultures, history, values, and emotions,” Al Nahyan said.

Engaging with the other, and comprehending and appreciating them, is a step that starts with every book people read, he added.

“Each book enables a new understanding of our own selves and that

The festival featured more than 100 international authors and 200 panel discussions. It ended on Saturday.