Continuing dialogue while also establishing new forms of cooperation between the Italian cultural centres and the Islamic university of Al Azhar, in Cairo. This is the commitment reasserted yesterday, June 20th, in the Egyptian capital by the Patriarch of Venice, card. Angelo Scola, and by Ahmed et – Tayyeb, head of Al Azhar university, the most important cultural centre in the Arab world (400 thousand students from all over the world and 9 thousand lecturers). The meeting was the result of the visit paid to Ahmed et – Tayyeb by the Scientific Committee of the international journal Oasis, headed by patriarch Scola, who chose Cairo for its third meeting. Oasis (www.cisro.org), a six-monthly journal, promoted by the patriarch himself and by several European cardinals, bishops and church and academic representatives, is published in four bilingual editions (Italian-Arab, English-Arab, French-Arab and English-Urdu). The Cairo meeting was also attended by Egyptian, Pakistani, Tunisian, Algerian, Ghanaian, Indonesian and Syrian experts. Human rights, women, relations between Islam and modernity were discussed. Ahmed et – Tayyeb dwelt on "friendship between Islam and Christianity” and the “uninterrupted bond that links the great monotheistic religions”, while card. Scola emphasised “the proposal of salvation and happiness that is made to everybody” by these religions, as well as “the dramatic differences between them". Strategic, according to the patriarch of Venice, was "the pledge to establish relations with Islam through the Christian communities that live in countries with a Muslim majority “.
