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Proactive steps to enhance mutual respect and understanding include intercultural exchange programmes among youth and

students, particularly within the ASEAN regional community

Image: SOASCIS

nities, raises issues of national integration and assimilation

which are by no means easy to resolve. Both responses call

on Muslim communities in Europe to conduct intercultural

rapprochement and interreligious dialogue with their respec-

tive indigenous majority communities.

There are scriptural, historical and pragmatic imperatives

for positive interfaith relations and dialogue between Muslims,

Christians, people of all religious faiths and those of none.

Muslims understand the interrelatedness and interdependence

of the human family. They have always teamed up with others

in order to bring about values that will encourage moral and

spiritual development. This is why interfaith relations, and

Christian-Muslim relations in particular, are always important

to the Muslim agenda.

Since the 1970s, active groups of Christians, Muslims and

people of other religious faiths have done practical things

together as equal partners in various European countries.

The establishment of the Centre for the Study of Islam and

Christian-Muslim Relations (CSIC) in the then Selly Oak

Colleges in Birmingham is a prime example of what has been

achieved. CSIC, which later became part of the Department of

Theology and Religion in the University of Birmingham, has

been involved in training, both academically and otherwise,

a host of Christians and Muslims around the world who have

gone on to be active in interfaith relations either as education-

ists or in other fields. The centre no longer exists in the same

format, but the justification for its transformation was that it

had created enough similar centres and institutions in Britain

and around the world.

In the United Kingdom (UK) in particular, organizations such

as the Interfaith Network, UK, the Christian-Muslim Forum, the

World Congress of Faiths and the International Conference for

Dialogue amongst Jews, Christians and Muslim in Europe (JCM)

are active in interfaith dialogue. At the Europe-wide level, perhaps,

JCM Partners in Dialogue is the most enduring in terms of bring-

ing together groups of religious leaders, theologians, academics

and research students of theology and religious studies from the

three Abrahamic faiths, annually for a Conference on Interfaith

Dialogue.

There are a number of local interfaith groups around

the UK involving, perhaps, all religious faiths on the planet.

At the academic level, with CSIC having paved the way,

there are now a host of institutions offering programmes in

interfaith studies. The Centre for the Study of Jewish-Christian

Relations, University of Cambridge; the Prince Al-Waleed

bin Talal Centre for the Study of Islam in the Contemporary

World, Edinburgh University; the Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal

Centre for Islamic Studies, University of Cambridge, and the

Centre for Muslim-Christian Studies, Oxford have a specific

mission of research in interfaith studies.

The Al-Waleed

Network links institutions around the world: Edinburgh and

Cambridge (UK), Beirut (Middle East), Cairo (Africa) and

Georgetown and Harvard (USA), all of which are committed

to intercultural/interfaith research and activities.

Case study: Brunei Darussalam

At the 69th session of the United Nations General Assembly

in 2014 the current ruler of Brunei Darussalam, His Majesty

Sultan Haji Hassanal Bolkiah, stressed that the country will

continue to be involved in worldwide initiatives to promote

the principles of respect and mutual trust among communities

across the world through interfaith and intercultural dialogues,

and emphasized that these principles should serve as the foun-

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