King urges focus on common ground

Craig Nelson, Associate Editor

• Last Updated: July 17. 2008 12:25AM UAE / July 16. 2008 8:25PM GMT

King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, left, shakes hands with Rabbi Arthur Schneier at a three-day interfaith conference in Madrid. AP Photo

MADRID // Declaring that “Islam is a religion of moderation and tolerance” that calls for dialogue, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia yesterday urged Muslims and people of all faiths to emphasise what they have in common rather than what they have in conflict.

“Humanity can destroy the planet or turn it into an oasis of peace,” King Abdullah, 84, told a gathering of Muslims, Christians and Jews, as well as Buddhists, Hindus and Sikhs at the opening of an unprecedented three-day interfaith conference he has convened in the Spanish capital.

The chorus of approval from the crowd – which included Tony Blair, the former British prime minister, Rev Jesse Jackson, the US political activist, and Terje Roed-Larsen, the former UN envoy to the Middle East – was resounding.

“The conference is a courageous act by the king,” said Cardinal Jean-Louise Pierre Tauran, the president of the Roman Catholic Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue. “We are condemned to dialogue. There is no alternative.”

Mr Blair, who was warmly greeted by the Saudi monarch at the meeting’s opening, said: “It is a real statement for coexistence.”

The event’s extraordinary nature was further underscored by the presence of an Israeli Jew, David Rosen, who was among 10 rabbis in audience during the opening session in the glass-roofed courtyard of the 16th century hunting palace outside Madrid that for 30 years served as the home of Francisco Franco, the late Spanish dictator.

At a reception later in one of the high-ceilinged marble rooms, the 10 gathered quietly in a corner to pray.

“The Saudi king has stretched out his hand,” said Mr Rosen, the director of international outreach for the American Jewish Committee. “Of course there are lots of risks and ulterior motives [in holding the conference], but it doesn’t mean it can’t be constructive. I hope it leads to more follow-up, even a conference in Saudi Arabia.”

In his six-minute speech, King Abdullah avoided theology and focused instead on such humanitarian issues as terrorism, crime, family disintegration and the “loss of values”. Discussion of religion, he said, had undermined previous interfaith initiatives, in part because participants felt their beliefs compromised, threatened or trivialised.

“Most dialogues have failed because they were discussions based on differences. They failed because they tried to merge religions and creeds,” he said.

The king, who was joined at the podium by Spain’s King Juan Carlos I, walked haltingly and with a slight stoop – an indication, said one longtime observer of Saudi Arabia, of a possible motive for pressing ahead with the dialogue despite opposition from some conservative Saudi clerics. Saudi Arabia’s prevalent strand of Wahhabism prohibits the practice other faiths in the Kingdom and mostly opposes dialogue with non-Muslims.

“He doesn’t have much time and he wants to do a few things,” the observer said on condition of anonymity. “His brothers let him do this, and he is willing to take the risk for the sake of moderation.” King Abdullah was one of the 25 half-brothers of the late King Fahd.

The king’s efforts have not been universally applauded. The Institute for Gulf Affairs, a Saudi opposition group based in Washington DC, published a report titled Tolerance or Exploitation? that lambasts the Madrid conference for being hypocritical.

Holding the meeting in Spain, the report stated, “indicates Saudi Arabia would prefer not to have its domestic human and religious rights record called into question”.

Ali Ahmed, the director of the Institute for Gulf Affairs, said it would have been better for the conference to be held in Saudi Arabia since it would have signalled that its religious establishment is changing its views towards non-Muslims.

“It should have been done in Saudi Arabia and should have been representative of the people,” Mr Ahmed said in an interview.

King Abdullah announced his interfaith initiative in late March emphasising his dismay at what he described as a spiritual void, the erosion of the family and an “imbalance of reason, ethics and humanity”. Saudi religious scholars, he said, had agreed to opening the dialogue.

Before branching out, he addressed fissures among Muslims, holding a conference in Mecca last month that was attended by Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, the former Iranian president.

In November, King Abdullah also became the first Saudi monarch to visit the Vatican to meet the pope. The king said he would “never forget” the encounter with Pope Benedict XVI, during which the Roman Catholic leader “warmly welcomed me”.

cnelson@thenational.ae

With additional reporting by Caryle Murphy, Foreign Correspondent, in Riyadh