Catholicism and Islam sit down to talks
MOSCOW. (RIA Novosti political observer Andrei Fedya****n) - Pope
Benedict XVI has blessed the creation of a permanent instrument of
dialogue between Catholic and Muslim theologians and religious
figures.
The first Catholic-Muslim Forum will be held in Rome on November 4-6,
the Vatican announced on March 5. The agreement was reached between
representatives of the Holy See and five members of a delegation
representing the "moderate wing of Islam". They represented almost all
the trends of that world religion and theologians from more than 40
Muslim countries.
The Roman Curia seems to be confident that the very first meeting will
be a success. Otherwise it wouldn't have announced that its
participants would be granted an audience with Christ's Vicar and
moreover that another such conference would be held in 2010 in a
Muslim country that is yet to be named.
The first stage of the Muslim-Catholic experiment in direct dialogue
in Rome will have the shape of a seminar on the theme "Love of God,
Love of Neighbor". The title reveals the goal of the new forum: to
try, proceeding from the shared tenets of love of God (Allah, the
Beneficent and the Merciful) and love of one's neighbor in the Muslim
and Christian faiths, to find common ground at the "interface of
faiths" and put the multibillion army of believers on the road to
"mutual respect and understanding", redirecting the "stray ones" if
necessary.
As the Muslim participants in the Vatican meeting have declared, the
forum could reconvene at any time in-between scheduled meetings "if
emergency global cir***stances arise similar to the mass unrest and
protests caused by the publication of cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad
in 2006."
On the whole, the intention is laudable. Vatican had long been
expected to take such a step towards dialogue. But the goal will not
be easy to reach.
The mutual dislike and hostility in the relations between Christians
and Muslims are nothing new, but in the 21st century that old
phenomenon got a shot of "growth steroids" in the shape of 9/11 in the
United States and the publication of caricatures of the Prophet in
Denmark.
It is enough to trace the motives that brought the sides to the
dialogue to realize that dealing with Catholic-Muslim relations is
skating on very thin ice.
The dialogue arose from a row when Muslims accused the Pontiff of
insulting Islam and all Muslims in 2006. It all started when the Pope,
delivering a speech at Regensburg University in his native Bavaria,
urged the need to cast aside outdated Christian approaches to the
Prophet Muhammad, and cited, as an illustration of a biased approach,
a tirade by Byzantine emperor Manuel II, who claimed that Islam was
"evil and inhumane". The phrase, plucked out of context, caused an
outrage in the Muslim world because it was skillfully "interpreted"
and served up by those who had never read or heard the Pontiff. In
October of last year a large group of Muslim leaders approached the
Pope calling him to a dialogue. He responded and the result is the
Rome forum.
Nobody questions that the Christians and Muslims need to understand
each other better. This is prompted by the fast-changing demographic
and religious map of Europe, where Islam is the fastest growing
religion. In 2006, there were 53 million Muslims in Europe, according
to the German Central Islamic Archive Institute. Of these, 16 million
live in the European Union. Some demographers claim that one in every
five Europeans will be a Muslim by 2050, and by 2100 a quarter of all
Europeans will preach the Koran. However, these forecasts are not
universally accepted.
The secretariat on interreligious affairs of the Jesuit Order, a
serious Catholic organization, dismisses the statistics about the
growth of the Muslim population. It may have a point. First, it is
hard to imagine where all these figures come from if the majority of
European countries forbid asking questions about religious affiliation
during demographic surveys. The Order's own studies show that when
Muslims join the profoundly secularized European societies their young
become Europeanized and the number of believers among them is no
greater than among Catholics.
One good illustration of the vagueness of "Muslim statistics" is
today's Russia, which, with certain reservations, may be described as
the biggest Muslim country in Europe, although it also covers a large
part of Asia. Russian Muslim population is variously estimated at
between 14.5 and 20 million. In fact, the CIA claims that there are 26
million Muslims in Russia.
Of course, it remains to be seen how the proposed dialogue will work
out. The first question that hardcore skeptics ask in connection with
the Vatican-Islamic forum is surprisingly simple: who will represent
Islam? If neither the Vatican nor the Islamic world is sure of the
answer, is it worth starting a dialogue at all? The sup****ters of the
dialogue respond that it is in any case better than new Crusades.
The opinions expressed in this article are the author's and do not
necessarily represent those of RIA Novosti.
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