“A new and significant step in the construction of relations between the Anglican communion and the famous Islamic ‘Al Azhar’ University in Cairo”: that’s how Anglicans have called the visit of Shaykh Fawzy El-Zafzaf, chairman of the committee for dialogue with the monotheist faiths of Al Azhar, to the theological college in Cambridge, Ridley Hall. The visit forms part of a series of commitments that the then Archbishop of Canterbury George Carey and the Grand Shaykh of Al Azhar, Shaykh Tantawy, signed in 2002, in an agreement in which both sides pledged to regularise meetings of dialogue and find new ways of gaining a better knowledge of each other’s faith. In the text of the accord, the two representatives established exchanges of visits between students and professors of the Islamic University and Anglican students and theologians. During his stay in Cambridge, the president of Al Azhar was able to meet Anglican theologians. Shaykh Fawzy El-Zafzaf said that “this visit is the visible expression of the love that exists between the Islamic and Anglican communities” and stressed the “wish of Al Azhar to participate in similar initiatives that are a clear sign of the desire of Muslims to create relations of friendship with others”.
