King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, which the U.S. State Department lists as a “country of particular concern” because of its severe restrictions on religious freedom, is sponsoring talks at the United Nations in New York today and tomorrow on improving interfaith dialogue. Is this a credible exercise?

(Photo: King Abdullah with U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon at U.N. in New York, Nov 12, 2008)

Analysis leading up to the meeting has been full of reservations. Our Riyadh bureau chief Andrew Hammond noted that the influential religious establishment in Saudi Arabia shows scant support for the king’s initiative. Our Middle East news editor Samia Nakhoul quotes Saudi delegation member Jamal Khajoggi as saying “The king can change positions, he can hire and fire people but he cannot change the mind-set of people or the clerical establishment quickly. It has to be gradual.”

The most brutal assessment came from Ali al-Ahmed, a Washington-based Shiite Muslim dissident from Saudi Arabia quoted by the New York Times: “It’s like apartheid South Africa having a conference at the U.N. on racial harmony.”

King Abdullah has taken some pioneering steps for a Saudi monarch. At the same time, his country still restricts all religious activity except Wahhabi Islam severely.

Do you think King Abdullah is a credible sponsor for a conference on interfaith understanding?

Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran, head of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue, has made statements in the past that made him sound quite sceptical about the value of a theological dialogue with Muslims.

(Photo: Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran)

That wasn’t what I found when I interviewed him last Saturday at his office on Via della Conciliazione, just down the road from St. Peter’s Basilica. The subject was the Catholic-Muslim Forum he had just hosted on Nov 4-6 between a Muslim delegation from the Common Word group and Catholic delegation of Vatican officials, Catholic Islam scholars and bishops from western and Muslim countries.

The Common Word group, he said, could become a “favoured channel” for Vatican contacts with Muslims, even while it retains other channels of dialogue. While he still had some reservations about the group’s approach because of differences he sees in ways of reading scriptures, he was quite positive about the actual dialogue itself. “In discussing the love of God, we were doing theology unintentionally,” he said. That jibed with a point that Muslim delegates made during the session itself. “I thought they didn’t want to discuss theology but we’ve been doing that from the start,” University of Cambridge Islamic studies lecturer Tim Winter remarked halfway though the conference.

The cardinal said he felt the most important part of the final communique was item number 5: “Genuine love of neighbour implies respect of the person and her or his choices in matters of conscience and religion. It includes the right of individuals and communities to practice their religion in private and public.” The public part is the key, since that could help Christian minorities in Muslim countries. It could also help Muslim minorities in western countries, which is why Muslim delegation head Bosnian Grand Mufti Mustafa Ceric persuaded the doubters in his ranks to accept it. Several Muslim delegates told me they most appreciated the next item, which reads: “Religious minorities are entitled to be respected in their own religious convictions and practices. They are also entitled to their own places of worship, and their founding figures and symbols they consider sacred should not be subject to any form of mockery or ridicule.” Tauran had more to say about this in the interview.

Tauran also said there were now too many different Christian-Muslim dialogues and he saw a risk that they could start tripping over each other. Here’s my news story on the interview.

Edited Q&A of Tauran interview: Due to some software glitches, you need to do the following to get to the second page of this post — click on the headline, then click on the page number “2″ below.  Page 2 includes Tauran’s closing remarks at the end of the conference.

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Saudi Arabia’s ban on churches on its territory is a thorny issue that loomed over the Catholic-Muslim Forum meeting this week in Rome. Some Catholics say the question of religious freedom for minority faiths in Muslim countries is so important that the Vatican should insist on strict reciprocity in such interfaith talks. 

(In photo: St. Mary’s Roman Catholic Church opens in Doha on 15 March 2008/Fadi Al-Assaad)

However, more believe it is not a good idea to make the dialogue hostage to a single issue, so it did not become a dealbreaker here. It did get discussed in the closed-door talks, which delegates said were quite lively at times, and it was referred to in the final declaration. Cynics may say nothing was resolved, but there are interesting nuances that could lead to change.

The final declaration had this to say: “Genuine love of neighbour implies respect of the person and her or his choices in matters of conscience and religion. It includes the right of individuals and communities to practice their religion in private and public.” Having Muslim delegates sign up to a statement that non-Muslims should be able to worship publicly in Muslim majority countries, i.e. have their own churches, is an important step. This is clearly aimed at Saudi Arabia, where the rights of other faiths are most clearly limited. A Catholic delegate told me some Muslims did not like the final part about practising religion in private and public but their delegation head, Bosnian Grand Mufti Mustafa Ceric, reminded them that this passage could also help minority Muslims who want to build mosques in Western countries. This is an interesting example of how the globalisation of Islam is starting to influence the traditional Muslim world.

Bishop Paul Hinder, the Abu Dhabi-based apostolic vicar of Arabia, said he sensed some change on the churches issues as well. Saudi Arabia bans the public practice of any other religion on its territory, arguing that it is holy land for Islam because the Prophet Mohammad was born there and the two most important mosques are located there. However, there are about one million Catholics in Saudi Arabia, mostly labourers from the Philippines, India and Sri Lanka, and they have no church. After the public session of the Catholic-Muslim Forum on Thursday, several journalists gathered around Hinder to ask his view of the meeting, the declaration and the outlook for Christians in Saudi Arabia. Here are some quotes:

(In photo, Bishop Hinder at left, Grand Mufti Mustafa Ceric in white turban at right, 11 Nov 2008/Alessandro Bianchi)

“There is hope that things can change and even get better. It’s not the case that we have nothing on the Arabian peninsula now. We have possibilities (to worship) in many (Gulf) countries, even if they are limited. There is one country where that’s not the case, but there are signs that that could change. I think that such declarations can give a boost and a motivation. I know there are Muslim colleagues in all countries are working to make this situation change, from my point of view for the better.”

The Swiss-born bishop, who has been in Abu Dhabi for almost five years, said he told Muslims at the conference about the difficult conditions the foreign workers live in — and not just Christians.

“I had comments from Muslims who said it touched them to hear what we said about the workers of Philippine, Indian or Sri Lankan origin there. It’s not only a question of religion, it’s one of social justice. You have to go look and see for yourself. They live in labour camps. They are almost kept as slaves. They’re in a situation almost like animals. That hurts us, not only for our Christians. I’d like to see more justice and human dignity for everyone. The question of practising any religion is important. I have asked leaders in our region why, if you think of building cinemas, theatres, sports facilities, mosques and shops inside these labour camps, haven’t you yet had the idea that maybe the others — the Christians of different denominations, the Hindus or Buddhists — have a spiritual need to worship together and that one should prepare the necessary places? I have said this and I think it has been understood. Obviously, I don’t think that when I get back there in a week, they will be building chapels in labour camps in Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries. But we now have this final document that helps and motivates. There are people who take what we say seriously. Things are moving, even in Saudi Arabia. Sometimes it’s better not make too much noise. Telling people what to do in a loud voice prompts resistance right away. If we negotiate patiently, there is much more comprehension for what one thinks.”

November will see an upswing on the interfaith dialogue front with two high-level meetings highlighting different approaches to the challenge of fostering better understanding among the world’s major religions.

The first will be the meeting of the Common Word group of Muslim scholars with Pope Benedict and top Roman Catholic experts on Islam next week (Nov. 4-6) at the Vatican. This will be the third conference initiated by the group, following sessions at Yale University in July and the University of Cambridge this month where Muslim and Christian religious leaders and theologians discussed in detail what unites and separates them. Being the supertanker of the Christian world, the Vatican has turned more slowly towards this theological dialogue than the smaller Protestant churches. But it has agreed to institutionalise the dialogue in a Catholic-Muslim Forum and give it a gesture of approval with a papal audience. Let’s see what comes out at the end of the talks next Thursday.

Here is my curtainraiser on the meeting.

The week afterwards, on Nov. 12-13, Saudi King Abdullah will be at the United Nations in New York to promote the interfaith dialogue that he launched in Madrid last July. This effort is much wider — the Madrid meeting had not only Christians and Muslims but also Jews, Hindus, Buddhists and people of other faiths. It seems like more of an official diplomatic offensive, especially with that U.N. connection. Reflecting that, the White House has announced that President George Bush will join Abdullah at the talks. There are reports that Israeli President Shimon Peres and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni might attend. One might be tempted to write the whole thing off as another talking shop, but an international body like the United Nations may be the right forum now for Abdullah to continue one pioneering aspect of this effort — his outreach to Jews. Several rabbis attended the Madrid meeting and Abdullah has said he wants to hold an interfaith conference in Saudi Arabia. That would have to include Jews if this whole project is to be taken seriously. Watch that space.

All this focus on better understanding between the world’s two largest religions looks like it is overlooking the third Abrahamic monotheism, but it’s not that simple. The Catholic Church has been talking a lot with Jews lately, most of it over the still open wound of the Pius XII papacy and his stand during the Holocaust. The Vatican was on the defensive on that one and Pope Benedict hinted on Thursday he would freeze the sainthood process for his wartime predecessor. At the same time, he told the International Jewish Committee on Interreligious Consultations that “dialogue between cultures and religions must more and more be seen as a sacred duty incumbent upon all those who are committed to building a world worthy of man”. While it wants to keep a sharp focus on Christian-Muslim issues, the Common Word group has also included rabbis in its discussions, especially when dealing with reading scriptures. The Vatican also plans another meeting with the International Jewish Committee in Budapest on Nov. 9-12.

The synod of Roman Catholic bishops that just ended in Rome has reminded the Vatican that it wants concrete issues such as religious freedom for Christians in the Islamic world to be part of any dialogue with Muslims. It’s not as if the Vatican has forgotten this — check out a recent statement by Rev. Christian Troll S.J., a leading Church expert on Islam. All this comes as the Vatican and the Common Word group of Muslim scholars prepare for the Catholic-Islamic Forum due in Rome next week.

The full text of the bishops’ proposal (number 53 of the 55 published only in Italian) reads in English:

“The Church regards with esteem … the Muslims who worship the one God” (Nostra Aetate 3). They refer to Abraham and worship God especially through prayer, almsgiving and fasting. The dialogue with them permits us to know each other better and cooperate in the promotion of ethical and spiritual values.

“In this dialogue, the synod insists on the importance of respect for life, for the human rights of men and women, as well as for the distinction between the socio-political order and the religious order in the promotion of justice and peace in the world. Another important issue in this dialogue will be reciprocity and the freedom of conscience and religion.

“It is suggested that the national bishops’ conferences, where it is deemed useful, create groups to promote dialogue between Christians and Muslims.”

These issues touch the practical side of what the Catholics want out of this exchange with Muslim scholars. For their part, some Muslim participants have been saying they feel some urgency about showing some concrete improvements to their communities. The Common Word dialogue is very much focused on theological level of dialogue, but practical considerations are never far away.

Item: reports from Saudi Arabia say King Abdullah may go to the United Nations in mid-November to discuss his interfaith dialogue campaign. This would be a follow-up to the meeting he hosted in Madrid back in July. This effort seems aimed at promoting better inter-faith understanding at the official or diplomatic level, which is another way to approach the issue.

Egyptian cleric Yusef Al-Qaradawi has provoked a storm of criticism with comments this month attacking Shi’ites for alleged attempts to proselytize in Sunni Arab societies. It’s a debate which has been bubbling since 2003 when the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein — which the Sunni Arab governments didn’t like but know how to live with — was removed by the American-led invasion and ultimately replaced by a Shi’ite government reflecting the demographic superiority of Shi’ites in Iraq today.

Free to contact work with fellow Shi’ites in neighbouring Iran and develop links with the powerful Shi’ites of Lebanon and even with the more precariously-placed Shi’ites in the Gulf Arab coutnries, the rise of the Shi’ites in Iraq has been nothig less than a seismic shift in the region’s potical landscape. Numerous Arab leaders have shown their concern with comments suggesting a crescent of Shi’ite power was developing across the region from Lebanon to Iran (as Jordan’s King Abdullah has said) or that Arab Shi’ites real loyalties are to Iran (according to Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak).

Qaradawi’s intervention is of equal import. He is one of the most influential of Sunni religious figures, a former Muslim Brotherhood sheikh in Egypt who settled in Qatar where Al-Jazeera television gave him a weekly television show. His opinions generally reflect the mainstream of Islamist thinking, veering neither into the rigid obsessions of Saudi Arabia’s Wahhabism nor appearing to compromise principles for the sake of a modernity that suits the West.

In an interview with the Egyptian paper Al-Masry Al-Youm (in Arabic) on Sept. 9, he was asked which was more worrisome, Wahhabism or Shi’ism. He offered a brief, yet tart, crticism of Saudi Islam, then launched into the “danger of Shi’ism” discourse, which has centred mainly on unsubstantiated claims of Shi’ism’s spread in Syria. “They are Muslims but they have innovated (new ideas into Islam) and their danger is their attempt to invade Sunni society, and they are ready for it since they have billions in wealth and cadres trained to proselytize Shi’ism in Sunni countries,” he said. “Unfortunately, I have recently found Egyptian Shi’ites. Ten years ago they wouldn’t have succeeded in getting one. … Now they are in the newspapers, on television and come out openly with their Shi’ite beliefs. Shi’ites hide their beliefs and that’s what we have to watch out for. We have to protect Sunni societies from the Shi’ite invasion.”

UPDATE: Here’s a Qaradawi interview in English on Shi’ites from Asharq Al-Alawsat.

Governments are worried about Shi’ism for political reasons, because Iran and Hizbollah are championing resistance to Western hegemony, while the Sunni Arab governments have been about accommodating Western power ever since Egypt signed the Camp David accords and since Saudi Arabia came into existence. Shi’ism has a certain revolutionary chic that is attractive to many Arabs today. Shi’ism’s central principle of venerating the family of the Prophet has an innocent-sounding air to most as well, although in points of theology it involves some radical breaks with Sunni thinking.

Saudi Shi’ite clerics were furious about Qaradawi’s comments since they instantly bring alive an argument they have been trying desperately to counter in order to ensure a better place for themselves as a persecuted minority in Saudi Arabia (here’s one cleric responding in Arabic on the Saudi Shi’ite website Rasid.com). Interestingly, though, Saudi media have for once been sympathetic to them, even highlighting Sheikh Hassan al-Saffar’s response on the front page of al-Watan on Saudi National Day, Sept. 23. “Saffar differs with Qaradawi and rejects criticising his status,” the headline read.

The Al-Riyadh newspaper carried a frontpage article apologising to Shi’ites for having publicising Qaradawi’s comments, which fly in the face of King Abdullah’s policy of promoting dialogue among Islamic sects and moderation. “Sectarian Islam, or the Islam of one faith?” al-Riyadh asked in a frontpage editorial on Sept. 24, also marking National Day.

One could not conclude, however, that the Saudi leadership is trying to distance itself from Sunni radicalism while Egypt encourages it. The calculations are too complicated. Saudi Arabia has led the regional mobilisation against Iran and Shi’ism of recent years, taking Egypt along with it. It has also sought to improve its Shi’ite minority’s status. Both are strategies that aim to secure the stability of the country from external enemies, like Iran, or friends, like the United States after 9/11, who occasionally entertain the idea of reordering the polities of the Arabian peninsula.

Ramadan television always throws up some controversy or talking point in the Arab world, but never of the nature of this year’s talking point. Hardline Saudi religious scholars are saying enough’s enough on the fun and frolics of Ramadan television and demanding trials for TV channel owners that could impose the death penalty.

What’s more, these owners are in fact Saudi royals and their friends. The main culprit is MBC1, owned by a brother-in-law of former King Fahd, but others include billionaire playboy prince Alwaleed bin Talal, dubbed by the religious right in Saudi Arabia “the shameless prince” (al-amir al-majin). The clerics in Saudi Arabia have enormous influence and they are worried that liberals in government and their royal allies are plotting to caste them aside and secularise the country.

It is unlikely that Alwaleed or the family of Fahd’s sister are worried about the attacks. They live in a world apart of palaces, servants, private planes and cruise ships in France and probably no one could get near them if they tried. The clerics were careful to talk about a legal process in any case. In fact, one of them, Sheikh Saleh al-Lohaidan, said specifically that he wasn’t calling for vigilantes to take the law into their own hands.

For Saudi clerics, the process is all, since they have the unique privilege in the Islamic world of sitting as judges in the Sharia court system. That is the very definition of the Islamic state in their eyes. It’s not the first time the religious establishment has condemned liberals in any case. Even Osama bin Laden singled out Labour Minister Ghazi Algosaibi — a poet, former ambassador to London and confidante of the king — in a taped message from his hideout on 2006 attacking a liberal “fifth column” at home. But Algosaibi and other punching bags of the Islamists survived.

Interestingly, most Saudis would probably say Lohaidan and co. have a point. Everyone complains about cheap jokes and sexual innuendoes in some Saudi comedy shows on TV after sunset during Ramadan. Most would say that the “sorcery” channels on Arab satellites are wrong. But it’s a vague tut-tut of disapproval delivered in the knowledge that the clerics’ ability to stand up to the temporal power of the Al Sauds has always been limited despite their loud bark (the most notable modern example being the way they were forced to sanction the presence of US troops on Saudi soil to eject Iraqi troops from Kuwait). People will nod in agreement that “immodest” and “immoral” television must stop, but not fully compute the fact that for the clerical puritans “sorcery” includes horoscopes that so many follow and the romantic soap operas from Turkey that their wives are hooked on.

A popular Arabic saying has it that “the dogs bark but the desert caravan rolls on.” It is a notable shift in the socio- political landscape of Saudi Arabia that this is how a significant portion of the population now view the once all-powerful clerics.

Regarding those romantic Turkish soap operas — they’re a hit across the Arab world. Riyadh staffer Farah al-Sweel wrote about the hit series “Noor” a few months ago. The Algerian daily Le Quotidien d’Oran recently ran a story about its effect there, including warnings by imams not to watch such immoral fare.

Part of the attraction for female viewers seems to be the heartthrob leading man, Kivanc Tatlitug. Here he is in a scene, dubbed into Arabic, where he visits his wife Noor in hospital.

Meetings of theologians don’t usually make news. But trends can make news. A series of meetings can start to show some direction the participants’ thinking is going in. If it’s a new direction, and one with potentially positive results, then we journalists on the Godbeat take notice.

The “Common Word” conference now underway at Yale Divinity School in the United States is at the heart of a trend towards increasingly frequent and detailed discussions among Christian and Muslim scholars and leaders. This trend is a reaction to September 11 and other Islamist attacks in Western countries. To our 24/7 news culture, this sounds like a very slow-fused reaction indeed, but changing attitudes and building trust takes time.

Just about every conference participant I’ve spoken to has stressed that work towards greater understanding between Christians and Muslims was now moving ahead on several fronts. “There’s definitely something in the air,” remarked Miroslav Volf, a Protestant theologian who runs the Yale Center for Faith and Culture. As University of Cambridge theologian David Ford put it, “People were almost waiting for an initiative around which they could gather and which generally gave some way forward for Muslim-Christian engagement. Many initiatives were on the Christian side before but this was a Muslim initiative. It’s had the desired effect.”

We’ve blogged a lot here about the Common Word dialogue appeal last October by 138 Muslim scholars to Christian leaders. That appeal prompted Volf and three Yale colleagues to write a welcoming response signed by about 300 theologians and church leaders, mostly Protestants in the United States. It led to a meeting at the Vatican in March that agreed on a conference and meeting with Pope Benedict in November and a regular Catholic-Muslim forum. Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams also hosted a meeting of Christian theologians in June to write another response that will be discussed at another Common Word conference at the University of Cambridge in Britain in October.

An interesting twist has been the burst of interfaith activity by King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, whose strict Wahhabi sect of Islam came to be seen as a stumbling block to better relations between Islam and the West after it turned out that 15 of the 19 9/11 attackers were Saudis. Abdullah paid a surprise visit to Pope Benedict at the Vatican in November and announced he wanted to promote interfaith understanding. This was initially greeted with scepticism, including on this blog, because it looked like this might be more a PR exercise than a serious initiative. But Abdullah held an interesting meeting in early June of Muslim scholars — Sunnis, Shi’ites and others — to win approval for his project. He then convened a surprising interfaith conference in Madrid this month that brought together Muslims, Christians, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists and others.

Has interfaith dialogue become a bandwagon that Abdullah felt he had to jump on? Is he trying to compete with the Common Word? It might look like that, but conference participants here don’t think so. They think more initiatives only help the trend and don’t see Abdullah’s more diplomatic approach taking anything away from the theological discussion the Common Word is proposing.

A few comments from Muslim participants:

Ingrid Mattson, president of the Islamic Society of North America, said many people thought the Madrid conference would only be a showcase for the Saudis, but she felt it had an important symbolic value. “I think it was a bold step and a good step. I don’t think it will be important programmatically. I think it’s important in opening minds.” Just by being the Saudi king, Abdullah can set a tone,” she said. “He can get people excited and then they’ll go off and figure it out themselves. That’s what I’m looking for, not for big initiatives to come out of it.”

Mustafa Ceric, grand mufti of Bosnia, said “I am glad that we now have from the Muslim world many movements of dialogue and interaction with the West. Each one has its own merit. King Abdullah wants to say something and I think we should listen to him.” The Common Word project, he said, “is based on the more intellectual and spiritual aspects of something everlasting. It is not temporary, it is not a political thing, it is based on a deep intellectual desire to understand the depth of the Christian-Jewish-Islamic message, or the Ibrahimic tradition.”

Ibrahim Kalin, director general of the SETA Foundation for Political, Economic and Social Research in Turkey and spokesman for the Common Word at the Yale conference, said “we don’t see any rivalry with other initiatives. We wish them well.” Abdullah’s efforts were good for improving contacts and communications between Christians and Muslims. “If you place our initiative in the context of Islam-West relations, it is helpful in countering and correcting misperceptions. There is nothing like face-to-face interaction. You can read all kinds of books and write all kinds of articles, but it’s never the same as sitting with that person for a day or two discussing things.”

Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah looks determined to get his proposal for an unprecedented Muslim- Christian-Jewish dialogue off the ground. A three-day conference in Mecca to discuss this ended with a soaring declaration of goodwill and benevolent intent. Saudi media reported that Muslim clerics from around the world had supported the call and confirmed that dialogue with other faiths was legitimate in Islam.

The official Saudi Press agency said the meeting recommended holding “conferences, forums and discussion groups between the followers of the prophetic messages and relevant civilisations, cultures and philosophies to which academics, media and religious leaders will be invited”. Given the gazillions Riyadh must be earning with oil at $140 a barrel, it may not be long before we see all sorts of petrodollar-funded “dialogue sessions” being held here and there.

Interfaith dialogue is a good thing, but the recent rising chorus of calls for more such talk hasn’t just emerged out of a vacuum. There is already a decades-long history of dialogue sessions that essentially exchanged pleasantries and generated warm feelings but did little to actually reduce misunderstanding and mistrust. The latest generation of initiatives — for example the Common Word consultations and the “Painful Verses” book we’ve blogged about here — takes the disappointment with earlier efforts as its starting point and aims to tackle the issues that earlier dialogues tended to avoid.

So where is King Abdullah on the timeline of interfaith dialogue? Up there at the cutting edge? Or a decade or so behind the times? It’s hard to say if we only have some official reports of his comments to go by. But there are a few red flags popping up in the mostly positive reporting, suggesting that whatever he comes up with may not amount to real progress.

For example, the Sunni-Shi’ite harmony message supposedly sent by the presence of former Iranian president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani looked a lot thinner when journalists looked beyond centre stage. “Some Shi’ites said that, despite the presence of Iran’s Rafsanjani, few of their number were invited to the Mecca meeting. None came from Europe or North America and one from Saudi Arabia’s own Shi’ite minority which complains that it is given second class status,” our Riyadh bureau chief Andrew Hammond wrote.

Riazat Butt, religion correspondent for the Guardian, covered the conference and heard one of the classic Muslim views that goes against Abdullah’s position and turned some non-Muslims off dialogue with the muftis years ago. She wrote: “Abdullah’s understanding of interfaith dialogue differs from the one held by the grand mufti of Saudi Arabia, Abdul Aziz Al al-Sheikh, who said dialogue with other religions was a way to bring non-Muslims into Islam. The cleric, who is the highest official of religious law, told the delegates that converting people to Islam was the ultimate goal of dialogue, a point made several times. “It is the opportunity to disseminate the principles of Islam. Islam advocates dialogue among people, especially calling them to the path of Allah.”

The grand mufti also contradicted Abdullah on dialogue with Jews, who the king has suggested could come to Saudi Arabia for talks on what would be an unprecedented visit. As Butt (right) wrote, “Several clerics, including the grand mufti of Saudi Arabia, said it was almost impossible to talk to them because of the situation in the occupied territories. ‘How can you negotiate with someone who is against you all the time? They seem to be against us in every way so I don’t know how we’re supposed to have dialogue.’ Egyptian cleric Yusuf al-Qaradawi said he would only talk to Jews who denounced Zionism and he urged Muslims to talk to Buddhists, Hindus and atheists. His impromptu speech, lasting 15 minutes, garnered the loudest applause, proving his popularity among fellow clerics even if the west views him with suspicion.”

After having a front-row seat at the Mecca meeting, Butt was quite sceptical about the prospects for Abdullah’s initiative. But the attention this idea has been getting at the Vatican and among Jews shows there is a lot of official interest in it. If the Saudis start organising these interfaith talks, do you think they will actually produce more than nice words? Will they reflect what Saudi clerics actually think?

Remember that unexpected comment that Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah made in March that he wanted to hold an inter-faith dialogue with Christians and Jews? The Vatican welcomed it and the Tel Aviv newspaper Yedioth Ahronot reported that Saudi muftis were sending out feelers to Israeli rabbis about attending such talks, a report which was swiftly denied in Riyadh.

FaithWorld’s take on it at the time was sceptical. As Andrew Hammond in Riyadh wrote: “The king is seen in Saudi Arabia as a reformer but one who has been outmaneuvered by the powerful religious establishment and their allies in the royal family. The interfaith conference call may be a kind of trial balloon launched to see what kind of reaction it gets in a country where liberals and religious conservatives are engaged in an ideological struggle for the future of Saudi Arabia.”

The World Jewish Congress issued a statement on Monday welcoming the king’s proposal. It quoted WJC President Ronald Lauder as saying many obstacles still stood in the way but “King Abdullah’s initiative is a laudable step forward. We hope that other religious and political leaders throughout the world will be encouraged to join.” WJC Governing Board Chairman Matthew Bronfman added: “The World Jewish Congress is ready to participate in any serious inter-faith talks that are based on mutual respect.”

Another Tel Aviv newspaper, Haaretz, took this a step further today with a story saying: “Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah has sent an invitation to the World Jewish Congress for an interfaith dialogue with Muslim and Christian leaders, Haaretz has learned.” Now that would be news … if it were confirmed. But the WJC promptly denied the report, saying it had not received anything. The positive statement was issued now because the WJC steering committee just held its first meeting since Abdullah’s proposal and discussed it there.

The idea that Saudi Arabia would invite Christians and Jews to Islam’s heartland for “conferences between the religions to protect humanity from folly,” as Abdullah put it, is clearly too tempting for the Tel Aviv newspapers to ignore. But is it realistic to expect the Saudis to host such talks? Let us know what you think.