Córdoba, May 17, 2022. The I Forum ‘From Islam-Christian Dialogue to the Abrahamic Family’, organized by the FICRT Foundation, closed its academic part with the fourth session, in which interreligious dialogue continued to be discussed, this time focusing on Al-Andalus, on relations between Jews, Christians and Muslims, and on the evangelical community.
Mª Ángeles Gallego, Senior Scientist at the Institute of Languages and Cultures of the Mediterranean and Near East of the CSIC, addressed in her lecture, the first of the fourth session of this First Cordoba Forum, the interactions between Jews and Muslims in Al-Andalus.
The doctor recalled that, in 2016, a group of Sephardic Jewish intellectuals published a manifesto and created an organization aimed at promoting equality between Jews from the Middle East and Central Europe, as the latter often hold the top positions in Israel’s administration and government.
“The manifesto defends the rights of the Sephardim and denounces the marginalization they suffer, in addition to proposing that Israel define itself as a state of the Middle East, rather than as a state of Europe in the Middle East,” he explains.
The goal is to strive for a new Golden Age, a concept that is already present in the history of the Jewish community. This Golden Age has a double meaning: on the one hand, it defines Jewish life in Al-Andalus; on the other hand, from a more academic point of view, it refers to the period between the tenth and twelfth centuries, of social and cultural heyday of the Jews in Al-Andalus, especially with regard to Hebrew poetry.
The characteristics of this Golden Age are threefold: Jewish participation in the Muslim government; the development of Hebrew grammar to revive a language that was dead; and thanks to this, the development of a Hebrew poetry that has gone down in the history of Jewish literature.
The second speaker was Dr. Ahmad H. Anwar, professor at the Faculty of Letters of the University of Port Said (Egypt). In his presentation, Anwar warned about some of the dangers that globalization can bring to humanity: “Man can end up becoming a machine of production and consumption, directed robots in a directed world. Where are the moral, religious, ethical, artistic values? A single, unified, universal culture is created, which imposes itself and leads to the emergence of something as dangerous as the awakening of tribalism, based on religion and ethnicity. Its intention may be good, but it may end up resorting to violence to impose its views.”.
He also referred to some milestones in the recent history of fraternity and interreligious dialogue, such as the signing of the Document on Human FraternityThe event will be held in February 2019 by Pope Francis and the Grand Imam of Al-Azahar, “which is the spiritual engine of this Foundation”.and the creation of the Egyptian Family House, in a very complicated social environment as it was in 2011.
The session closed with the intervention of Christian Giordano, Doctor of Theology from the Free University of Amsterdam (The Netherlands), representing the Evangelical Church. Giordano explained that Protestant and Evangelical churches have hundreds of millions of faithful worldwide, including Protestants, Anglicans, Orthodox, Eastern Rite Catholics, Indian Catholics and Pentecostals.
“Interreligious dialogue is complicated, because first you have to define what is a religion and what is a sect, who represents whom. Besides, you can’t talk to everyone at the same time, although we should strive to do so,” he says.
He also stressed the need not to limit this dialogue to people of faith, but also to extend it to secular groups, which coexist in society with the religious.
The Forum ends with the presentation of the Cordoba Manifesto, which includes the main conclusions drawn from the speakers’ interventions and constitutes the document that will set the course for future meetings of the FICRT Foundation.
