Senior Christian and Muslim scholars and leaders are meeting in
the United States this week seeking common ground in their
different faiths to foster better understanding between Islam and
the West.
Hosted by Yale University Divinity School, the conference is the
first public dialogue launched by Muslim intellectuals in the
Common Word group that appealed to Christian leaders last year for
discussions among theologians to promote peace.
Most US participants are Protestant theologians and church leaders,
including some prominent evangelicals, but some Catholics and Jews
also are taking part.
The Muslims, both Sunnis and Shiites, hail from around the
world.
Their conference comes just more than a week after King Abdullah of
Saudi Arabia, home of Islam's strict Wahhabi sect, hosted an
unprecedented meeting of Muslims, Christians, Jews, Hindus and
Buddhists in Madrid and pledged to pursue interfaith
dialogue.
"We have broken the ice of mistrust between the West and Islam with
this initiative," said Mustafa Ceric, grand mufti of Bosnia.
"In world affairs today, the rule should not be the argument of
force but the force of argument."
Ceric, whose homeland in former Yugoslavia was torn apart by ethnic
and religious strife in the 1990s, said it was time for serious
dialogue among mainstream faith leaders after years in which
violence by Islamist radicals has dominated the headlines.
Miroslav Volf, a Yale theologian co-hosting the sessions, agreed
this and other recent interfaith encounters in Europe and the
Middle East pointed to a growing interest in seeking more
Christian-Muslim understanding.
"There's definitely something in the air," the Croatian-born
Protestant said.
The Common Word project, started last October by 138 Muslim
scholars, says Christianity and Islam share two common core values
- love of God and love of neighbour.
The group says discussions on this among experts can help defuse
tensions between the faiths.
Christian leaders have responded positively to the appeal.
Platform for mainstream Islam
The Common Word group, a multinational platform for mainstream
faith in a religion with no central authority, will meet Anglicans
in October and Pope Benedict in November.
"In the modern era, we have never had anything like this where such
a large group of people from all kinds of religious, ethnic and
cultural backgrounds agreed on an issue such as this," said Ibrahim
Kalin, a spokesman for the group.
"The common understanding here is that we have different
theological languages but the ultimate object of our discussion is
the same," the Turkish philosopher said. "There is only one God but
we approach God with different languages."
The Yale conference began on Friday with closed-door talks among 60
theologians about how the two faiths understand the concept of
loving God and loving one's fellow man.
It will expand to 150 in public sessions from Tuesday to
Thursday.
An important aspect of the meeting is that evangelical Christians
are among the participants.
Some United States evangelical preachers denounce Islam as a
false and violent religion but several evangelical leaders support
this dialogue.
"One of the most interesting places of Christian-Muslim
confrontation in the world is where evangelicals meet Muslims,"
said John Stackhouse, a Canadian evangelical theologian from Regent
College in Vancouver.
"Evangelicals want other people to convert and in Islam, the worst
thing you can do is convert."
While neither side denies the differences between their faiths,
they agree that better understanding can help defuse tensions that
often spill over into violence.
"If you're just trying to get along and not fall in love with
each other, that is a practical agenda," Stackhouse said.
The Common Word appeal did not address Jews but the group has
invited some Jewish scholars to join the talks.
"At the end of the day," Kalin said, "we are really talking
about a Judeo-Christian-Islamic tradition."
Rabbi Burton Visotzky of New York's Jewish Theological Seminary was
among the conference speakers on Friday.
"If religious leaders can help move political issues to peace rather than war, then we've done God's work," he said.
