We shouldn't fear Islam

The president of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran says that Catholics should not fear Islam, but rather welcome the chance for deepening their faith through interchange with Muslims.

Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran affirmed this in Granada, Spain during his Feb. 10 opening address for a two-day congress sponsored by the Faculty of Theology of Granada. The congress was titled “Christianity, Islam and Modernity.”

“We must not fear Islam,” the prelate affirmed, “but I would say more: Christians and Muslims, when they profess their own faith with integrity and credibility, when they dialogue and make an effort to serve society, constitute richness for the latter.”

He pointed out that “in the last five years, the climate of dialogue with Muslims has improved, although contrasting elements still remain.” Among the differences, the cardinal mentioned discrimination of women and freedom of worship, which is absolutely denied in Saudi Arabia.

Cardinal Tauran said that each one of us must address a “triple challenge:  identity - to have a clear idea of the content of our faith; difference - knowing that the other is not necessarily an enemy; and pluralism - acknowledging that God is working mysteriously in each one of his creatures.”

Community

He added “For a Westerner, Islam is difficult to understand. It is at the same time a religion, a society and a state, which brings together 1.2 billion people in one great worldwide entity called the ‘ummah’.”

“The members of this community practice the same rites, have the same vision of the world and adopt the same conduct,” he noted. “Moreover, they do not distinguish between the private and public sphere.”

“This religious visibility disturbs secularized societies,” the cardinal added. “However, the new fact is that in the Western world, Muslims and non-Muslims are obliged to live together. In Europe, for example, we live with third-generation Muslims.”
 
Overcoming fear

The cardinal stressed the need to “make an effort, on both sides, to know the religious traditions of the other, to acknowledge what separates us and what brings us close and to collaborate for the common good,” which “is no easy task.”

In regard to the differences between Christians and Muslims, the cardinal explained that we are separated by “our relation with the sacred books, the concept of revelation - Christianity is not a ‘religion of the book’ - the identity of Jesus and of Mohammed, the Trinity, the use of reason, the conception of prayer.”

On the other hand, he affirmed that the two religions hold several things in common: “the oneness of God, the sacredness of life, the conviction that we must transmit moral values to young people, the value of the family for the emotional and moral growth of children and the importance of religion in education.”

Cardinal Tauran affirmed that “we, Catholics, are guided by the teaching of Benedict XVI, who has made interreligious dialogue one of the priorities of his pontificate.

Excerpt from Zenit.org, December 1, 2009.
 

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