Muslims seek crisis management plan with Vatican

Muslim scholars due to meet Pope Benedict and Roman Catholic officials this week hope the Vatican will agree to a joint crisis management plan to defuse tensions that flare up between Christianity and Islam.

Violent protests in the Islamic world after a Danish newspaper printed cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad might have been averted if Christians and Muslims had spoken out jointly against such unrest and the provocation behind it, they say.

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 during talks between today and Thursday.

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," Ibrahim Kalin, an Islam scholar from Turkey who is spokesman for the group.

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

Bloody protests broke out in Muslim countries after Pope 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.

The Common Word manifesto, which now has 271 signatories, brings together leading Muslim officials and scholars from around the world. Its 24-member delegation to the Vatican talks will be led by Grand Mufti of Bosnia Mustafa Ceric.

Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran, head of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue, will head the Catholic delegation made up of 24 Vatican officials and Catholic experts on Islam. Christianity has about two billion followers worldwide, just over half of them Catholic, while Muslims number 1.3 billion.

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