An historic agreement has been reached between Islam and the Church of England, the church founded by Henry VIII in 1532. Four months after the terrorist attacks on the USA, the Archbishop of Canterbury, George Carey, has signed an agreement with Mohamed Sayed Tantawy, the grand imam of the Egyptian university of al-Azhar al-Sharif, which envisages an intensive programme of dialogue between Anglicans and Sunni Moslems. The new pact between Islam and the Church of England, the result of negotiations and discussions between Anglicans and Sunni Moslems over several years, also makes provision for the establishment of an interreligious commission, composed of representatives of the two religions that will meet at least once each year in Egypt and in the United Kingdom to encourage reciprocal understanding between the two faiths, and to work together to combat injustices and human rights abuses. The university of al-Azhar al-Sharif in Cairo, the city from which imam Tantawy comes, has a history stretching over a thousand years and an international study centre for Sunni Moslem scholars. In 1995 and in 1999 archbishop Carey gave lectures at the university of al-Azhar and in 1997 imam Tantawy visited Lambeth Palace, the archbishop’s seat in London. “We are convinced that the friendship that transcends national, ethnic and religious differences is a gift of the Creator in whom we all believe declares the historic agreement and we recognize that both sides must accept each other in a direct manner, so as to be able to spread their message of peace to the rest of the world. We believe that dialogue, if it be genuine, may lead to the restoration of the image of one faith in the eyes of the other”.
