The annual meeting of Communion and Liberation is taking place in Rimini in its 43rd edition, which saw the protagonist in its inauguration days Muhammad bin Abdul Karim Al-Issa, Saudi politician, secretary general of the Muslim World League, former defense minister and president of the International Islamic Halal Organization. He writes Communion and Liberation through social media, in reference to the intervention of Al-Issa: “An appeal to the humanity of each, with a look of faith”, “trying to enhance daily collaboration, thus building an existence where peaceful coexistence between peoples and religions can take place “,” in an era in which the problem that most wounds humanity is the risk of neglect of the self “where” education in the religious sense is central to making friendship possible that does not censor diversity, but is able to grasp what makes us all the same in the end “.
The secretary general first opened his speech with a harsh condemnation in no uncertain terms of the assault suffered by the writer Salman Rushdie, calling it “a crime that Islam does not accept and categorically rejects” and then went on to underline that true Islam, takes sides against any type of violence and cannot tolerate and make admissible any instrument that can provoke it and lead to behaviors of this kind, since, admits Al-Issa, not even phrases or words that could be interpreted as offensive justify actions of this magnitude . Al-Issa expressed himself following the meeting he had with Cardinal Matteo Maria Zuppi, to recall how religion is by its nature against violence and how therefore Islam also refers to a sacred text that explicitly rejects it.
His notes on the meaning of human existence and human life, on the sum of values and principles that represent the foundations not only of philosophies, but of religions and of the spiritual life of each one, are sensitive and important. Passion, love, compassion, mercy, were evoked by Al-Issa who, after tracing the points in common between the respective faiths, placed the attention and care of the discourse on the certainly more knotty and difficult theme: interreligious dialogue, both what concerns the Islamic world internally, and the external one with respect to other faiths. “Dialogue is the language of the reasonable and the wise”. A speech that did not leave the Italian Catholic community indifferent and did not leave even laymen and non-believers indifferent.
In fact, it is from the time of the Villa Madama agreements signed by the late Bettino Craxi, who expected a position that was both ecumenical and open-minded by the Muslim world and that would invite constructive dialogue with Catholics.
Under rocks and stones, the water still flows.
It was the work of Villa Madama in 1984, although unfinished, which already gave occasion to John Paul II, in the year of the Second Vatican Council, to thus attempt to revolutionize the communication of the Church in the world in order to bring religion back to being the principle of human implantation in all its identity differences. In these words of Al-Issa, there seems to be a first attempt to reopen the path started then by the Catholics. “Religiosity has to do with the human personality”, said Thomas Aquinas and therefore religion is consequently included in the sphere of justice.
Al-Issa remains an essential point of reference for every moderate of the Islamic sphere and for those places where religions are unable to enter into an agreement with the state, precisely because of the lack of representative figures of the communities in charge of the issue. , and where it becomes increasingly necessary to proceed on the path of ever greater recognition of religious differences.
Bringing back to the center of the debate precisely the need to enter into agreements with the respective religious communities in a different way to guarantee full freedom to each confession, is what one would hope would happen first of all between the Shiite and Sunni parts of the Middle Eastern world, where they are added then other direct faiths such as Judaism. In other words, religious democracy.
It is a modern spirit of Islam that suggested by the words of Al-Issa, which brings to the fore the discrepancies and conflicts that have never subsided and which are resurrecting and re-proposing themselves in the Middle East and beyond (see Salman Rushdie) precisely in the latter. weeks, an appeal for freedom that wants to refer to the necessary process of civilization and freedom of religious expression. Since spirituality cannot be separated from any political process, it will not be practicable without a basic identity that is not democratic and universal and ready for the occasion for a healthy reformism.
The gaze of Al-Issa, the modern spirit of Islam (by V. Garau)