The Commission is preparing for its 20th conference in November this year in Hungary, which will focus on Catholic-Jewish relations in Eastern Europe.  The offical topic of the conference is “Civil and Religious Society, Catholic and Jewish Perspectives.”  This parallels other interfaith activities underway between different groups, and it’s good that we’re all “singing from the same page in the hymnbook”.

Hoffmann quotes John Paul II: “Anti-Semitism is a sin against God and against humanity. And so the Jews can be sure they have found an ally in the fight against anti-Semitism.”

That’s nice.  But I really look forward to the day when our religious leaders, Jewish Christian and Muslim, feel comfortable broadening their focus in saying that we must respect each others’ religious beliefs, and not be hateful to those of other religions.   May it be God’s will that one day we will be able to say that Jews, Christians, and Muslims stand together against anti-Jewish, anti-Christian, and anti-Muslim activities.

Dave

Common Ground highlighted an article in Pakistan’s Daily Times in which Islamic Scholar Genevieve Abdo criticises interfaith dialogue as being “misguided” and “dangerous”, because we are “[m]erely embracing Muslims who are already converted to a Western school of thought … [and] avoiding the fact that there are profound differences between Muslims in the East and non-Muslims in the West.”

She says that a far more effective effort would be to appeal to the disaffected youth in Europe and the Muslim world who “loathe the US and much of what it represents … Despite the overwhelming evidence of a decline in the West’s relationship with the Islamic world, it still has no effective foreign policy strategy for engaging Islamist leaders and Muslim societies in a meaningful way.”

I don’t question that creating positive opportunites for disaffected youth, anywhere, is critical to building a positive future, and I also agree that the “West” has failed miserably in effectively engaging with the Islamic world. This has been mainly due to a bad combination of acting in self-interest rather than for the greater good, paternalism, and bigotry – on both sides.

Progress will be extremely difficult, however, without achieving a better understanding of, and between our faiths and worldviews. Interfaith dialogue is only as good as the distance it’s willing to go – if it is unwilling to go beyond commonalities, then I agree with Abdo that it is pointless. But understanding those commonalities, and building trust are critical first steps that cannot be bypassed.

Some of the groups I’m involved with are starting to discuss the more controversial issues, and that’s fantastic. We are discussing them as close friends, and we have a personal stake in positive outcomes. To us, that’s a lot more meaningful than another government programme with well-intentioned but inexperienced bureaucrats throwing money someone else’s social problems.

Dave