three-day colloquium led by the French cardinal Jena-Louis Tauran, current president of the Papal Council for Interreligious Dialogue, and the President of the Tehran-based Islamic Culture and Relations Organisation, Mahdi Mostafavi.
The statement was seen, unavoidably, in the context of a lecture on Faith and Reason given by Pope Benedict XVI in Regensburg last year. That lecture began with the thesis that both faith and reason are gifts given by God to humanity. That was followed by the proposition that faith and reason were not contradictory: faith might sometimes go beyond reason, but could never be directed against reason.
The joint statement at the end of the commission's most recent meeting in February in Cairo declared that all religions respect "the dignity and honour of the human person without consideration of race, colour, religion or conviction".
Both sides committed themselves to promote "true respect for religions, beliefs, religious symbols, holy Books,"
clipped from: www.qantara.de