Pope to host summit with Muslims

[Neil_Anthony]

Pope to host summit with Muslims

Pope Benedict XVI will host landmark Catholic-Muslim talks in November to improve ties between the two religions.

The announcement was made in a joint statement after a two-day meeting between senior Vatican and Muslim leaders in Rome.

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news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7279412.stm

 

[stevescribb]

Dialogue is always good. However, I hope I never see a Pope kiss the Koran again.

 

[Dale_M]

Yes, dialogue is good thing. Bringing our religions together may help combat the excesses of Western secularism and of Muslim extremism.

Ali Aref Nayed said he realised that Pope Benedict was exercised about restrictions on religious freedom faced by Christians in Muslim countries, but said he hoped the Catholic-Muslim Forum would not turn into “an exchange of grievances”. It should instead be a gathering in which both sides could support religious freedom “for all people”.

In a written statement Abdal Hakim Murad Winter, director of Britain’s Muslim Academic Trust, who took part in this week’s preparatory talks, said those who believed in the one God had a responsibility to reach out to each other.

There was a widespread sense in the West “that religion brings discord rather than healing to the world,” he wrote, but “the reality of engagement between believers of different traditions is overwhelmingly one of conviviality”. Extremists on all sides obscured this “by using language of exclusion and contempt”.

timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article3494863.ece