Catholic-Muslim Dialogue Focuses on Countering Violence

(25 Feb 10 - RV) Dialogue with the Muslim world was at the top of the agenda in Cairo this week: in the Egyptian capital a delegation of top Vatican officials, lead by Cardinal Jean Louis Tauran, held its annual meeting with the Al-Azhar permanent committee for Dialogue among the Monotheistic Religions.

The encounter, which concluded on Thursday, commemorates Pope John Paul II’s visit to Al-Azhar university, the most important centre of Arabic literature and Islamic learning in the Sunni Muslim world.

The theme of this year's gathering was how to combat violence perpetrated in the name of religion – a particularly sensitive topic in light of the massacre of eight Coptic Christians by extremist Muslim gunmen following the celebration of an Orthodox Christmas Eve mass in January this year.

A former head of the Vatican’s council for Inter-religious dialogue and expert on the Islamic world, Archbishop Michael Fitzgerald currently serves as papal nuncio in Egypt and the Holy See’s representative to the Cairo based Arab League


At the conclusion of the Cairo Meeting Archbishop Fitzgerald spoke to us about a list of 11 recommendations drawn up by the Catholic and Muslim participants. They focus on concrete ways to combat violence and exploitation of religion:


“We were looking at the causes of violence, and our Muslim partners were stressing the teaching of the Koran on brotherhood and on respect and on common humanity, that was the ground of the discussion. Afterwards we established a number of things, in fact there were 11 recommendations. The 11^th was about attention to text books, because there is a feeling that sometimes in the text books there are things that are not accurate and things that don’t help appreciate the other religion or the other person. Both Christians feel this, and I think Muslims too”.


Q. So the need for a greater attention to teaching the history of each other’s faiths in schools to the younger generations?

 

 
“Yes and not only the history of each others faiths but history as such, and the way history is presented. There is work to be done in fact to give a more nuanced view of certain periods of history, whether it is the Islamic invasions of other countries or whether it is the crusades”.


Q. What were the other most significant steps forward, and how difficult was it to reach a consensus on these issues?

 

 
“Well, it was very difficult to reach a consensus. There are certain terms of course that were difficult to understand. Like, we spoke about the ‘purification of memories’ but I think that many Christians might have difficulties with that too. And I think another point that was important and that we agreed on was to be careful to avoid discrimination based on either ethnicity or religious affiliation. We both feel, I think, both the Muslims as well as the Catholic side that we don’t really reach the public and we have to make a greater effort to reach the public. But we haven’t really identified practical steps with which to overcome this”.