We need more places of worship, especially for Muslims. We need places of worship in every neighbourhood. People belonging to faiths other than Christianity need them even more urgently, especially Islam. We also need cultural initiatives that promote reflection, not provocation that only creates dead-end debates and sensationalism. True and fruitful dialogue with people who are different is currently a real emergency everywhere.

People often say that Islam scorns other religions and their followers, that it is fanatical, exploits its faith for twisted or criminal ends, doesn't use reason as a means for discussion or discourse with its people, enslaves its women.

This is a common accusation. However, only by talking with Muslims will people discover if the common perceptions are true, or true for everyone. Isolated, serious incidents committed by individuals must not make people accuse all Muslims of such crimes or look on them with suspicion.

It is time to abandon prejudices and stereotypes and begin open and objective dialogue with people of other religions, including Islam. Only through dialogue can people ascertain whether their fears, suspicions or doubts are justified or not. During visits to homes of Muslims in their neighbourhood, priests and lay faithful should be instructed to leave written greetings as a sign of the Church's willingness to dialogue.

Before the motley crusade of xenophobes, nostalgic Catholics and right-wingers cry for my blood let me inform them that I have not written the above. They are a summary of a speech Cardinal Dionigi Tettamanzi gave last year in Milan before the December 7 feast of St Ambrose, a 4th century bishop of Milan.

The summary is based on the report penned by Carol Glatz and published by the Catholic News Service news agency on December 8, 2008. It can be retrieved from the website www.catholicnews.com/data/stories/cns/0806140.htm.

Cardinal Tettamanzi is an eminent moral theologian besides being the worthy successor of Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini, SJ, in the Milan archdiocese. He is also a frequent speaker on social issues, highlighting in particular people left behind by globalisation. He is a heavyweight in Church circles.

The relevance of the cardinal's remarks increases when one considers that they were made just a few days after two Moroccans (one of them a Muslim prayer leader) were arrested on the suspicion that they were planning terrorist attacks on targets in northern Italy. The arrests led Italy's interior minister to call for a moratorium on the building of new mosques in Italy, saying mosques were being used to recruit terrorists and finance terrorism.

Why am I using the Cardinal's speech several months after he delivered it? Because I am shocked by the strong and negative reaction of so many 'good' Maltese Catholics at the news that a number of Muslim men - many of them Maltese - conducted a prayer session on the Sliema front in protest against the closing of the flat they used as a mosque. It seems that some Maltese so-called Catholics are more imbued with the mentality of Norman Lowell and his likes than the mentality of eminent churchmen like Cardinal Tettamanzi.

The natural question to ask is: "Should we have more mosques in Malta?" I am answering that in my blog in www.timesofmalta.com.

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