In the name of Allah…” “” “

In the present delicate phase of the world political situation there is no other way than interreligious dialogue. Any temptation to invoke the “conflict between civilizations” needs resolutely to be rejected. To be able to undertake a truly fruitful dialogue, the field needs to be cleared of residual nineteenth century conceptions. It’s enough to think of the following examples. In the first place, it makes no sense to use the word “Allah” in speaking of God in an Islamic context. “Allah” is simply the Arabic word for the God of Abraham, of Isaac and of Jacob – the God worshipped by the Jews, Christians and Moslems. When one enters a Catholic church in Beirut, Damascus or in Cairo to attend Mass in Arabic, one always hears the same name “Allah” invoked… In the second place, the Christian could perhaps recite 90 percent of the verses of the Koran without betraying his own faith. The remaining 10 percent concern, however, the heart of the faith: for Christians, God became man, “one of us”, sharing with us the tragic condition of death before finally overcoming it in the Resurrection; God is the Trinity (Father, Son and Holy Spirit); God is he who works redemption on the cross on which he embraces the whole of humanity. For Moslems, by contrast, God is the great “solitary one”: they do not accept the trinitarian life, or the incarnation, or redemption. This is the great divide between the two faiths. We need to accept these differences in reciprocal respect. Nonetheless, Islam is not so “remote” as it was imagined by nineteenth-century culture. In the happy definition of a German scholar the appearance of Islam in the Mediterranean world of the seventh century produced nothing but a faint and shifting line of demarcation that did not prevent the exchange of goods and ideas. It’s enough to think of the fact that the European universities in the Middle Ages owed their emergence to the need to respond to the challenge posed by Islam. In the West people have forgotten the fact that a large part of the “land of Islam” (Syria, Egypt, Asia Minor, North Africa etc.) had once constituted the heart of Christianity. It was there that everything began: theology, liturgy, spirituality, Christian art… It is essential to defend the rights and ensure the hospitality of Moslems in Europe. But it is equally necessary to defend the Christians who have remained in the “land of Islam”: their rights and their survival, comprising the right of everyone to be converted to Christianity. Many Moslems today – even among the “doctors of the law” – accept that the verses of the Koran and the dictates of the Koranic law are to be interpreted in the light of the conditioning of the time (for example of the struggle between Mecca and Medina). There is no sense, therefore, in digging up isolated verses to accuse the Moslems of planning a “holy war”. In conclusion, all the believers in the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob have the duty to live in practice the dual commandment: love God with all your strength and love your neighbour as yourself. “Loving your neighbour as yourself” means, above all, defending the universality of the rights of man. No exception to this rule can be permitted in the name of any religious or cultural tradition.