Vatican opens channel to the Muslim world

BY A CATHOI/C HERALD CORRESPONDENT
THE HISTORY of relations between Muslims and Christians and Muslims "has had its lights and shadows, yet there remains a spiritual bond which unites us and which we must strive to recognise and develop," the Pope said last week.
The Holy Father met members of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue and leaders of the Al-Azhar University of Cairo last Friday, the day after they signed an agreement to establish a permanent CatholicMuslim dialogue commission. He said dialogue between the two faiths "is more necessary than ever" in order to encourage peace and harmony.
The Rector of Al-Azhar University is the highest moral authority of the world's Sunni Muslims. The new dialogue commission is the first official channel for communication between Muslim and Vatican officials, and the Pope described it as "a further step in the building of ever stronger and more friendly relations between Christians and Muslims". The work of the dialogue, he said "will prove essential for building that peace which we hope future generations will be able to enjoy." Cardinal
Faith in Egypt
THE LEADERS of Cairo's AlAzhar University may have signed up to a new CatholicMuslim dialogue commission, but ordinary Christians in Egypt, as elsewhere in the Islamic world, may find themselves being treated as the Bishop of Hyderbad said recently as "second-class citizens or traitors", reports Dr Patrick Sookhdeo of the Barnabas Fund. Christians often find it harder to get justice in the courts and normal protection from the police. Christians in rural Egypt are completely vulnerable to Islamic militants who attack them, their shops and their fields. Forty were killed in El-Minyah province in one weekend in September 1997. Christians may face problems when it comes to building churches. In Egypt until recently a law required permission from the President himself even to repair a broken lavatory in a church.
Arinze, President of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue, signed the agreement, together with Bishop Michael Fitzgerald, secretary of the council, Sheik Fawzi al-Zafzaf, President of the university's Permanent Committee for Dialogue with the Monotheistic Religions, and Ali Elsamman, VicePresdient of the dialogue committee.
Cardinal Arinze said: "If Christians and Muslims maintain mutual relations, more than 50 per cent of humanity would already have a good rapport." The cardinal and Sheik al-Zafzaf will head the new commission.
The text of the agreement signed on Friday emphasises "the importance of promoting accurate knowledge of the [two] religions and for each religion to have a correct understanding of the beliefs and practices of the other religion". Official dialogue between the Vatican and the Muslim world could, according to the agreement, help Catholics and Muslims "fight together against religious fanaticism as an expression of exclusion and a source of hatred, violence and terrorism."