The Pope Needs Help

Interreligious Dialogue has been attempted through the ages countless times. Should we do anything to assist in the process this time? Our website is based on the mission that we should offer what we can to assist in the process. Each of us can offer a token gesture of encouragement for the process of interreligious dialogue to our respective religious leaders by using our website to print out and mail off a Note of Encouragement. Thanks to the several thousand participants to date we help keep the process alive.

Peace and Conflict Resolution.Org took the process one step further in also recommending the structure needed for serious progress. We tend to agree with Mohammed Arkoun, the 80 year old Muslim intellectual quoted in Chiesa (a research organization that covers the Vatican):

“The criticism made against Benedict XVI, but even more so against the Islamic world as a whole, by a prominent Muslim intellectual, Mohammed Arkoun.

Arkoun, 80, born in Algeria, has taught at the Sorbonne, at Princeton, and at other famous universities in Europe and America. Today, he is the research director at the Institute of Ismaili Studies in London, founded by Aga Khan.

Interviewed by John Allen, the Vatican analyst for the "National Catholic Reporter," during a conference in Lugano, Switzerland, Arkoun took his cue from the lecture in Regensburg:

"Pope Benedict has said that an intimate relationship between reason and faith does not exist in Islamic elaboration and expressions. This statement, historically speaking, is not true. If we consider the period from the 8th century to the 13th century, it is simply not true. But after the death of the philosopher Averroes in 1198, philosophy disappeared in Islamic thought. To that extent the pope was right [...]. The fact is today, when one speaks with Muslims, they don't have any idea about this history."

And the 138 who signed the letter are no exception, Arkoun continues: "I don't know any historians of thought among them."

So the pope is mistaken to choose them as dialogue partners:

"The pope should create a kind of space of debate, instead of all these so-called interreligious dialogues that have been going on since the Second Vatican Council. I've participated in so many of them, and I can tell you that they're absolutely nothing. It's gossip. There's no intellectual input in it. There is no respect for scholarship in it. A huge scholarship has already been produced devoted to the question of faith and reason. All this is put aside and we ignore it. We just congratulate one another, saying: 'I respect your faith, and you respect mine.' This is nonsense."

And to the question of whether the young Muslim generations have a real thirst for a new way of expressing their faith, different from that of the "ulema on the television, " Arkoun responds:

"Of course. When [in Egypt] I give a lecture, the turnout is enormous. The interest of people is very strong. Also the older generations are happy, they feel they can breathe. People applauded when I said after this affair with the pope [Pope Benedict's 2006 lecture at the University of Regensburg] that Muslims should not go to the street demonstrating against him, but they should run to the libraries. They should know what has happened to Islamic thought after the 13th century”

Coming back to the question of what can be done to structure real progress in interreligious dialogue in the peace building process, Peace and Conflict Resolution.Org submitted the following letter to Pope Benedict XVI.

Dear Holiness,

As you commence the great undertaking of forming guidelines for interreligious dialogue, please allow us to offer these discoveries of our own.

We discovered that discussions conducted by persons of good will coming together to resolve religious differences as "children of the God of Abraham" helped inspire participants to listen to each other with ears hearing for the first time. I've seen fires of the spirit quelled in such context.

Also, there is a staggering adjustment of attitudes towards serious progress among participants when validated extra sensory spiritualists of any religion participate in the process.

For there to be constructive interreligious dialogue we must dare to conclude if Christ were  writing the deliberations, is it conceivable that he might apply to take and fully participate in the Hajj to Mecca and while there offer to share the Eucharist with his Muslim brothers? Equally important, do his Muslim brothers accept the offer? If yes, help orchestrate and enact this profoundly historic symbolic event from the Vatican all the way into Mecca and personally participate through a large interreligious group ending with his Holliness walking around the Kaaba, with the Muslim ulema ending with the Eurcarist with ulema participation.

Most Respectfully Submitted
Rich Buckley, Pres.
Peace and Conflict Resolution.org