Muslims team up with Vatican to defuse tensions

Muslim scholars and Roman Catholic officials, including Pope Benedict, will join together to agree on a crisis management plan to help defuse tensions that flare up between Christianity and Islam.

If Muslims and Christians speak out jointly about issues as they arise than protests and misunderstandings can be averted, the scholars said, referring to the mass protests in the Islamic world after a Danish newspaper printed cartoons of Prophet Mohammad, considered offensive and provocative.

This proposal is one of several ideas for better interfaith cooperation that the Common Word group, a broad coalition of Muslim leaders and scholars pursuing dialogue between the world's two largest religions, will present at the Nov.- 4-6 talks.

"We should develop a crisis reaction mechanism so if there is another cartoon crisis, we could get together and make a joint statement," said Ibrahim Kalin, an Islam scholar from Turkey who is spokesman for the group.

They would also speak out against religious persecution such as the oppression of Iraq's Christian minority, said delegation member Sohail Nakhooda, editor of the Amman-based magazine Islamica. "We have to look out for each other," he said.

The Common Word manifesto, which invited Christian churches to a new interfaith dialogue based on shared principles of love of God and neighbor, was issued in October 2007 partly in response to Pope Benedict's Regensburg speech a year earlier.

Muslims protested after Benedict hinted there that he considered Islam a violent and irrational faith. The Common Word group said the incident revealed such mutual ignorance that a new cooperation drive was needed.

In meetings this year with mostly Protestant leaders, Common Word delegates have proposed regular dialogue sessions, student exchanges, suggested reading lists and other ideas to help Christians and Muslims learn more about each other.

We should develop a crisis reaction mechanism so if there is another cartoon crisis, we could get together and make a joint statement.

Islam scholar from Turkey

Dialogue defuses tension

Cooperation between churches and mosques in the Netherlands defused tensions before far-right politician Geert Wilders released his anti-Islam film 'Fitna' early this year, Kalin, an Islamic studies professor at Georgetown University in Washington, said

"That was the first fruit of the kind of cooperation we want to have," he said.

The Common Word manifesto, which now has 271 signatories, brings together leading Muslim officials and scholars from around the world.

The delegations will hold closed-door talks on theology on Tuesday and issues of mutual respect on Wednesday, including the question of religious freedom in Muslim countries that the Vatican is especially keen to discuss.

The French Catholic daily La Croix, quoted a Cardinal as saying, the delegations should discuss religious freedom but it was not a Vatican precondition for a dialogue.

He said if Muslims could build mosques in Europe, Christians should have the same right in majority Muslim countries

Christianity has about two billion followers worldwide, just over half of them Catholic, while Muslims number 1.3 billion.