European Muslim leaders and Azhar scholars on December 1 welcomed a Vatican call for dialogue in response to an earlier Muslim initiative, though a leading international Muslim association has reiterated demands for a clear apology from Pope Benedict XVI for offensive remarks he made last year.
“We welcome the Pope’s positive response to the Muslim letter,” Mohamed Al-Bishari, the secretary general of the Islamic-European Conference was reported as saying.
On November 29, Pope Benedict invited Muslim scholars and intellectuals to a meeting at the Vatican for a dialogue. The invitation came almost two months after 138 Muslim scholars and dignitaries from around the world sent an open letter to the world’s Christian clergy, including Pope Benedict, for dialogue based on common essentials between Islam and Christianity.
Bishari, one of the signatories to the 29-page “A Common Word Between Us and You” letter (www.acommonword.com), said any dialogue with the Vatican should be unconditional and without a pre-planned agenda. Bishari said a Vatican meeting will not be a photo-op. “We need a serious dialogue between two conflicting systems,” he said.
Faisal Mawlawi, the deputy president of the European Council for Fatwa and Research, said dialogue will help bridge the gap between the two sides.
“We hope the Muslim initiative and the Vatican positive response will bury the Pope’s faux pas,” he said, referring to a controversial speech by the pontiff in his native Germany last year, in which he hinted that Islam was violent and irrational.
“Now the Pope has reciprocated the Muslim initiative and praised it,” said Mawlawi. He said the Muslim initiative has demonstrated that Islam is a peace-loving religion. “It has shown that Muslims eschew violence and reject knee-jerk reactions.”
Lhaj Thami Breze, the chairman of the Union of Islamic Organisations in France (UOIF), said European Muslims are in dire need for such a dialogue. “We live at the heart of Christian Europe,” he said. “This dialogue will be a plus to European Muslims in social, political and security terms.”
Though welcoming the Vatican’s call for dialogue, Azhar scholars have expressed their reservations about the meeting’s venue. “Of course we welcome dialogue, but it must take place in a Muslim country not the Vatican,” Abdel-Moati Badoiumi, a member of Al-Azhar’s Islamic Research Academy (IRA), said. “Saudi King (Abdullah bin Abdel-Aziz) recently visited Pope Benedict in the Vatican,” he recalled, adding that the pontiff should reciprocate. “It is the Pope’s turn now to arrange a meeting with Muslim scholars at a Muslim capital.”