A Common Word

Following the recent letter from Muslim leaders to Christian leaders, "A Common Word" stating the basis for a shared dialogue between the two faiths, a "Common Word" website has been launched here. The full text of the letter can be read including a huge range of worldwide responses from Christian and other leaders. It's fascinating to read and genuinely challenges us to think through, "what is my basis for dialogue with other faiths?" I heard a Christian academic of Islamics recently make the point that the "A Common Word" document is the Muslim equivalent of Nostra Aetate. NA is the Catholic church's groundbreaking document on the status of other faiths from Vatican II. Interestingly, that document stresses the basis of dialogue is not the shared belief in "worship of the one God and love of neighbour" but our shared humanity. This I prefer to see as the foundation of any incentive for engagement in relationship with the stranger: we are all human, all broken, all in need of each other, and ultimately God. Once you go beyond that, the nuances and niceties of what we understand by God, by "one", by "neighbour" are so intrinsic to our particular faiths that they become arenas for dialogue rather than shared platforms for dialogue.