Ian Linden: Muslim organisation celebrates Nostra Aetate

On 21 October the Dialogue Society held an interfaith event to highlight the importance of Nostra Aetate. It was an unusual initiative, a Muslim organization celebrating a landmark Catholic declaration of the Vatican Council on interfaith relations.

The Dialogue Society is the London branch of the Islamic Gulen organization, Hizmet. Once an extensive, highly successful and influential organization in Turkey, it was criminalized by President Tayyip Erdogan alleging the movement's complicity in an attempted coup against him in 2016. Many would say the charge was a way of eliminating what the Muslim President saw as a future rival in his quest for religious authority and exclusive power. Since then the organization has been persecuted and many of its members fled Turkey.

Entitled 'Interfaith Dialogue in an Age of Division: The Relevance of Nostra Aetate', the event took place in the Houses of Parliament, Committee Room One, and was a fitting tribute to the Dialogue Society's development in the UK. We gathered in a former chamber of the Supreme Court which was almost full with a distinguished audience as well as a well-chosen panel of speakers. Lord Alderdice, a former Speaker and member of the Northen Ireland Assembly, leader of the Alliance Party, introduced the speakers and topic with a sobering overview of contemporary international dangers and fears, and the divisions that accompany them.

His Excellency Archbishop Miguel Maury Buendia, Apostolic Nuncio, spoke of the importance of understanding the Jewish roots of Christianity, how Nostra Aetate had set in train decades of dialogue leading up to the Document on Human Fraternity signed by Pope Francis and the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar, Sheikh Ahmed el-Tayeb in Abu Dhabi in 2019.

Fabio Petito, Professor of Religion and International Relations at Sussex University, set Nostra Aetate in an historical context; the Church wishing to draw a line under generations of Christian antisemitism after the Holocaust. He described the document as a 'miracle' in the breakthrough it achieved in relations with other religions.

Professor Michael Barnes from Roehampton University had spent a lifetime in promoting interfaith relations. He underlined a phrase which he singled out as extraordinary both for its time and now; Christians should "recognize, preserve and promote" the good things, spiritual and moral found in the practice of other faiths.

Professor Mona Siddiqui, now at Kings College London, and a convincing voice on Thought for the Day for some 30 years, spoke in a different vein, free of institutional identities, about what is sometimes called 'the dialogue of life', our daily relationships with others of different faiths. As we had met long ago in another interfaith event, in of all places Tehran with the Iranian Shi'a, I asked her privately before the meeting began what would she point to as key to the inter-faith dialogue needed in a divided world. She said "friendship" and "hospitality".

Professor Peter Tyler from St Mary's University, Twickenham, a psychotherapist by profession like John Alderdice, underlined that we were living in a time of exceptional, radical change such as had not happened for over two hundred years. He referred everyone to Thomas Merton for parallels and a Catholic response. He believed Christians were still not fully aware of the impact of the Indian Dharmic faiths, notably Buddhism, whether as an expanding religion, or diluted to the level of yoga classes, their spirituality an attraction to youth, and pointed to its future impact on Catholicism.

Finally Dayan Eliezer Zobin, a senior Rabbi of the Ner Yisrael Synagogue and in the London court of Beth Din, spoke last. He reinforced several of the themes presented by the other speakers with the moral values shared by Judaism. A discordant note came unexpectedly in the middle of his talk: an attack on the November 2025 Kairos II on the plight of the Palestinians. There was a tangible intake of breath. Nothing was said. No-one returned to it in question time. It illustrated the profound difficulties posed to interfaith dialogue in the context of violent conflict.

Faced with this reality, it was just Mona Siddiqui, the only woman speaker and an Islamic legal scholar, who could speak to this problem with her conviction that there was nothing more important than building friendship and cultivating hospitality. It was also noticeable that Islam found a way into Nostra Aetate alongside Judaism because of the insistence - not mentioned by the speakers - of the Bishops of the Islamic Middle East.

Though Cardinal Koovakad, the Indian Prefect of the Dicastery of Interreligious Dialogue had just left, the meeting came as a fitting response to his visit to Britain. Appointed by Pope Francis and born in Kerala, he would have had a firm grasp of the importance of the Dharmic religions. Our own Walsall-born Cardinal, Michael Fitzgerald, a Muslim scholar and former President of the Pontifical Council of Interreligious Dialogue - as it was then called - in his 90s now, and unwell, sadly was also absent.

Professor Ian Linden is Visiting Professor at St Mary's University, Strawberry Hill, London. A past director of the Catholic Institute for International Relations, he was awarded a CMG for his work for human rights in 2000. He has also been an adviser on Europe and Justice and Peace issues to the Department of International Affairs of the Catholic Bishops Conference of England and Wales. Ian chairs a new charity for After-school schooling in Beirut for Syrian refugees and Lebanese kids in danger of dropping out partnering with CARITAS Lebanon and work on board of Las Casas Institute in Oxford with Richard Finn OP. His latest book was Global Catholicism published by Hurst in 2009.

LINKS

To read Dr Linden's blog see: www.ianlinden.com/latest-blogs/

The Dialogue Society: www.dialoguesociety.org/

Nostra Aetate:
www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_decl_19651028_nostra-aetate_en.html