VATICAN CITY (AFP) — The Vatican’s first-ever Catholic-Muslim forum kicks off Tuesday, two years after Pope Benedict XVI sparked outrage among Muslims for a speech seen as linking Islam with violence.
The three-day forum opens “a new chapter in the long history” of dialogue between the two faiths, the head of the Catholic delegation, Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran, told the French Catholic daily La Croix.
Benedict will meet with the delegations on Thursday.
The Muslim side is led by the mufti of Bosnia, Mustafa Ceric, whose spokesman Yahya Pallavicini told AFP the delegates “represent no state and no ideological tendency.”
The delegation includes Swiss intellectual Tariq Ramadan, an outspoken and controversial Muslim figure in Europe, along with Aref Ali Nayed of the Islamic Centre of Strategic Studies in Amman, Jordan, and Iranian ayatollah Seyyed Mustafa Manegheg Damad.
Source: www.acommonword.com