ROME: A group of 138 prominent Islamic religious leaders who are championing improved relations between Muslims and Christians have accepted an invitation by Pope Benedict XVI for a meeting and have suggested dates to prepare for such talks.
“In a letter to (Vatican Secretary of State) Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, we suggested a meeting could be held in February or March, to organise an audience with the Pope,” Yahya Sergio Yahe Pallavicini, an Italian imam who co-signed the letter, said yesterday.
The letter by the group of Muslim leaders which is headed by Jordan’s Prince Ghazi bin Mohamed bin Talal was handed over to the Vatican’s Nuncio or ambassador in Jordan’s capital Amman on December 12, Pallavicini said.
Vatican Radio announced on Thursday that the letter had been received without mentioning any dates for the proposed meeting.
But yesterday the Vatican’s top official for relations with Muslims, Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran, mentioned three themes that should underpin the talks.
“First, effective respect for human beings, their rights, foremost of which is the right to freedom of religion,” Tauran who heads the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue, told Vatican Radio.
“Then the need for religious dialogue to include an objective knowledge of the religion of others,” said Tauran, adding that the third theme would be “teaching young people mutual respect and tolerance”.
In their letter the Muslim leaders noted that while complete theological agreement between Christians and Muslims is impossible by definition, they do wish to seek common ground based on areas of agreement – “whether we wish to call this kind of dialogue ‘theological’ or ‘spiritual’ or something else”.
They also said they had been “encouraged” to make their proposal following the historic meeting in November between the Pontiff and Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah.
The meeting at the Vatican marked the first between a Pontiff and a Saudi monarch who traditionally also holds the Islamic title of “Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques”.
The group of 138 Muslims, under the auspices of an Amman-based non-governmental organisation headed by Prince Ghazi, the Royal Aal al-Bayt Institute for Islamic Thought, first reached out to Christian leaders with a letter in October.
The letter addressed to Benedict but also to the Anglican archbishop of Canterbury, the heads of the Lutheran, Methodist and Baptist churches, the Orthodox Church’s patriarch of Constantinople Bartholomew I and other Orthodox patriarchs, was widely viewed as a breakthrough in Muslim-Christian relations.
Stressing that Muslims and Christians made up more than half the world’s population, it identified their relations as “the most important factor in contributing to meaningful peace around the world”. – DPA |
