Dialogue Is Important

By Walid M. Sadi

This commentary was published in The Jordan Times on 23/01/2011

 

Relations between Al Azhar, the icon of Islamic studies, and the Vatican, the governing body of the Catholic Church, deteriorated in the aftermath of the attacks on Christian churches in Baghdad and Alexandria to a point that prompted Al Azhar to take the precipitous decision of “freezing” all contacts and dialogue with the Vatican.

On the one hand, it is understandable that the Vatican is concerned about the fate of Christians in the Middle East especially after sensing that the tempo of attacks against them has accelerated in recent times. On the other hand, Al Azhar is also understandably worried about the disturbing insinuations that Christians in the region are being purposely targeted and threatened by Muslims.

Al Azhar is one of the oldest universities, having been founded in 970-972 AD to serve as the seat of Islamic learning, and obviously does not take its decisions lightly. Islam’s foremost seat of learning must have decided that Islam and Muslims are being wrongly accused as intolerant.

While understanding that recent attacks on Christian places of worship may justify sounding the alarm worldwide about Arab Christians, there is really no justification for allowing the long history of good relations between Christians and Muslims in this part of the world to reach a point necessitating the severance of relations or suspending contacts and communications between them.

The attacks on some Christian churches in some Arab countries need to be seen by both sides as an aberration rather than the norm in the Christian-Muslim relations.

Against this backdrop, Al Azhar may wish to reconsider its recent stance on relations with the Vatican, because halting dialogue with it is not the best way to erase the misunderstanding between their followers.

Instead of closing channels of communications with the Vatican, Al Azhar must engage the Holy See in extensive talks with a view to eliminating all misreading of the situation of Christians in the region.

Al Azhar must convince the Vatican that Christians in the Arab states are integral part of the Arab society and their status as equal cannot be questioned simply because of isolated attacks against them by misguided and criminally minded factions.

The attackers of Christian holy sites may plan to drive a wedge between the religious communities in the Arab world, and if for only this reason, Al Azhar and the Vatican must join forces to defeat their common enemy with all their might, instead of stopping talking to each other.

There is every reason to believe that there is some faction or country out there that wants nothing better than to have the Arab nation divided along religious grounds. This threat requires first and foremost a united effort from the two religions to fight off this conspiracy. That is why Al Azhar must maintain its traditional warm and constructive relations with the Vatican.