At the official invitation of President Nursultan Nazarbayev, the Grand Imam visited Kazakhstan, the largest Central Asian republic, to participate in the opening of the sixth edition of the Religious Leaders Conference. At the beginning of the visit, Eurasia National University - the largest university in Kazakhstan - awarded the Grand Imam an honorary doctorate, in a large ceremony attended by university deans, professors, students, and cultural dignitaries.

During the visit, the Grand Imam met President Nazarbayev, who pointed out that Al-Azhar, by virtue of its global stature, plays a great role towards Muslim causes and Muslim homelands. 

For his part, the Grand Imam stressed, during his participation at the opening session of the conference, that it is inevitable to return to religion as a guardian of morals to address the crisis of our contemporary world, a very complex crisis that compounds pain, tension, and anxiety.