The website cites ZENIT as its news source, but I don't see the item posted on ZENIT...
Al-Azhar imam will
also boycott Assisi
January 24, 2011
An Egyptian daily has reported that the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar, Ahmed al-Tayyeb ,will not be attending the Assisi inter-religious meeting convoked by Benedict XVI for October. The Pope announced Jan. 1 that he would personally participate in the Assisi gathering, which marks the 25th anniversary of the first inter-religious prayer for peace event held there by Pope John Paul II.
"These meetings, ultimately, are not bringing any good to Muslims, and they don't do good to the East but only to the West," declared al-Tayyeb. "And in all the conferences in which we took part in the past, we said clearly that the West is not serious in its way of approaching the nature of Islamic civilization and the civilization of the Middle East and of Easterners."
"We hold ourselves to our relationship with the Vatican, but we also have the right not to be in agreement with the Vatican," he added, "and we hope that Benedict XVI, as a religious who appeals for peace, will address a word to Muslims apologizing for the Crusades and acknowledging the richness that the Islamic civilization has contributed to European civilization."
[Now, he's using 'dialog' as an opportunity for his sort of moral blackmail!!]
Meanwhile, Father Rafiq Greich, director of the press office of the Catholic Coptic Church in Egypt, told Arabia.net that the Al-Azhar decision was "surprising."
He said the Catholic Church in Egypt has clarified more than once the truth about the Pope's words, and that last week, together with the Orthodox Patriarch, representatives had taken the Pope's text in English with an Arabic translation to Mahmoud Zaqzouq, minister of religious affairs.
Father Greich said the meeting "shed light on Al-Jazeera's attempt to create problems between the Catholic Church and Egypt, and especially with Al-Azhar." Al-Jazeera is a news network.
"The Pope did not refer at all to the internal affairs of the Middle East, limiting himself to say: I ask the governments to protect the Christians and citizens of the Middle East. Al-Jazeera interpreted this passage as if the Pope had requested other governments to protect Christians, whereas he addressed his request to the local governments," the priest explained.
Father Greich added that a delegation, of which he was a part, headed by Auxiliary Bishop Kamal Fahim Awad (Boutros) Hanna of Alexandria, an aid to Cardinal Antonios Naguib, Patriarch of Alexandria of the Copts, went to visit al-Tayyeb last Sunday, and that "the truth of the Pope's interventions" had been clarified.
The sheikh of Al-Azhar invited the Vatican "to pay more attention in its interventions," but added that he was willing to issue a communiqué to explain what emerged during the meeting.
However, said Father Greich, "the communiqué never happened, and we were surprised when reading the communiqué of the Islamic Research Council manifesting the desire to interrupt dialogue with the Vatican, whereas we are convinced that everything can be resolved with dialogue."
"We are sorry that this is the position of the Islamic Research Council, especially because we see in its members prudence and wisdom, and we hope that dialogue will be taken up again as soon as possible at the local and Vatican level, especially because Catholics are an essential part of Egyptian society," he added.
P.S.
It turns out that the source for the above is a lenghty article in AsiaNews, not ZENIT:
Al-Azhar also expected in Assisi
by Fr. Bernardo Cervellera
Editor
ROME, Jan. 25 (AsiaNews) - The decision of Al Azhar to "freeze" dialogue with the Vatican continues to surprise and pain Egyptian Christians. The spokesman of the Coptic Catholic Church, Fr. Rafic Greich, has expressed regret over the Islamic University’s decision and his hopes that dialogue will resume.
Vatican officials, above all, hope that Al Azhar will not miss the meeting with representatives of world religions in Assisi in October, convokved by Benedict XVI to remember the 25 years since the first meeting called by John Paul II
and revive the "spirit of Assisi". [Benedict XVI did not say or imply this latter phrase in his January 1 announcement.]
Unfortunately, Al Azhar and the Egyptian government continue to criticize the Pope's words who – they maintain - asked the Western governments to come to the defense of Christians oin his New Year’s message.
In addition, they accuse the Pope of only being concerned for Christians and of not taking to heart "the violence faced by Muslims in Iraq and Afghanistan".
In fact, what the Pontiff said in his homily on New Year's Day was this
[which made no specific reference to the Alexandria bombings since this incident took place around the time the Pope was saying Mass:
In the face of the threatening tensions today, in the face above all of discriminations, tyrannies and religious intolerance, which today particularly strike at Christians, I reiterate once more my urgent appeal not to succumb to discouragement and resignation.
I call on everyone to pray so that the efforts undertaken by many to promote and build peace in the world may come to a happy end. For this difficult mission, words alone will not suffice - it requires the concrete and constant commitment of responsible national authorities[This is the closest thing he came to calling on national authorities in general to safeguard religious freedom and the rights of minorities], but above all, it is necessary that every person be animated by the authentic spirit of peace, that must be implored ever anew in prayer and that must be lived in our daily relationships, in every field.
*
The satellite channel al-Jazeera, and many Western media short- circuited the Pope's words in their headlines, summarizing them as "The Pope calls on Western governments to defend the Christians in the Middle East" - implying, in short, a new kind of crusade.
[One must note what else the Pope said in those days that related to anti-Christian acts. There was, of course, his message for the World Day of peace on January 1, a text released one month earlier, in which his only specific reference to anti-Christian violence was the All Souls' Day massacre of Christians in a Baghdad church. The entire message was, of course, on Rel;igious freedom, a path to peace', in which, he wrote, among other things:
Finally I wish to say a word to the Christian communities suffering from persecution, discrimination, violence and intolerance, particularly in Asia, in Africa, in the Middle East and especially in the Holy Land, a place chosen and blessed by God.
I assure them once more of my paternal affection and prayers, and I ask all those in authority to act promptly to end every injustice against the Christians living in those lands.
And then, at the Angelus on January 2, this was what he said explicitly about the Alexandria bombing:
Yesterday morning, we learned with sorrow about the grave attack against the Coptic Christian community of Alexandria in Egypt. This vile act of death - like that of placing bombs near the homes of Christians in Iraq to force them to leave - is an offense to God and all mankind, which only yesterday had prayed for peace as we started a new year with hope.
In the face of this strategy of violence targeting Christians, with consequences to the entire population, I pray for the victims and their families, and I encourage the ecclesial communities to persevere in the faith and in bearing witness to non-violence as the Gospel teaches.
Only people who never actually read the Pope's texts - or those who deliberately misrepresent his words - could find any iota of 'interference' in national affairs in these texts.]
It must be said that throughout the past few weeks and several times, Cardinal Antonios Naguib, head of the Assembly of Catholic Patriarchs and Bishops of Egypt, publically explained what the pope actually said.
A Catholic delegation, headed by Greek Melkite Patriarch Gregorios III, visited Mahmoud Hamdi Zaqzouq, Minister of Waqfs (Islamic Religious Affairs), to hand him the Arabic translation of Benedict XVI’s address and clarify the ambiguity caused by al Jazeera that "attempts to sow confusion and stir relations between Egypt and in particular, Al Azhar, and the Catholic Church."
According to Fr. Greich, Al Jazeera deliberately turned the papal declaration into a "request for Western governments to protect Christians," while the Pope only asked local governments to protect all citizens from terrorism.
A week ago, another Catholic delegation - including the auxiliary bishops of Alexandria, Mgr. Youhanna Golte and Mgr Boutros Fahim, along with Fr Greich - visited the Imam of Al Azhar, Sheikh Ahmad Al Tayyib, to present him with the actual statements of the Pope and point out Al Jazeera’s manipulation thereof.
At the end of the encounter Al-Tayyib agreed that Al Azhar would publish a statement on their meeting.
"Instead of such a press statement", said Father Greich, "we were shocked by the announcement of the freezing of dialogue between Al Azhar and the Vatican”.
The growing feeling among experts is that the freezing of the dialogue between the Vatican and Al Azhar is a smokescreen to conceal Egypt’s responsibility for the Alexandria attack.
From the very start the Egyptian government denounced "foreign hands" behind the massacre of Christians, stressing that "Christians and Muslims in Egypt are one nation."
[The Egyptian government has since laid the blame for the Alexandria attack on Al-Qaeda.]
This declaration of innocence is not totally true. In fact, the Christians in Egypt face discrimination on many levels (construction of churches, repairs, employment in public positions, etc.). Moreover, the government has one nothing to stop the growth of fundamentalism and fanaticism, which are the bedrock of terrorism.
From this point of view, in the aftermath of the attack in Alexandria, the Catholic Church has made a series of requests to the government (new laws on religious buildings; restructuring of the school curricula to erase discrimination, fair trials and the imposition of sentences for those who encourage fanaticism,..).
Instead, the government continues to favour the track of foreign terrorists, and is slow to address the problems of discrimination within its own borders.
To a certain extent, Egypt is behaving like many Western governments. These, too, after the bombings in Baghdad and Alexandria, cried terrorism, failing to realise that the crux of the problem of Christians safety lies with governments which prefer to sacrifice the followers of Jesus rather than risk unhinging the Muslim world. Thus they do not help religious freedom, but on the contrary, the leave the door open for fanaticism.
On the other hand,
Western governments should not be invoked to launch wars and sanctions, but to strengthen cultural dialogue, to support education (an area that is becoming increasingly controlled by al Qaeda), to suggest effective reciprocity.
[But no one, least of all the Church, has asked Western governments 'to launch wars and sanctions'! These governments know exactly what pressures they can apply to get results when they really want to, But so far, only the Italian government has publicly and diplomatically called on foreign governments to protect the rights of Christians. The United States has not officially said anything about this issue, not even after the Baghdad massacre in November, to say nothing of all the Christian killings in Mosul over the past few years.]
Under the shadow of this shameful situation of political inanity, both Eastern and Western, the real value of the meeting in Assisi and its "spirit" becomes increasingly relevant.
As in the days of John Paul II, in no way does it want to be seen as a sort of "UN of religions", a watered-down syncretism of identities. Rather, the global meeting aims to be a symbol.
Its "spirit" wants to emphasize two elements: that religion and religions are not a problem for the world, but a resource. That they can live together and are not destined towards an inevitable clash of civilizations.
In this sense, the Assisi proposal aims, as a positive gesture, to counter the problems which undermine global peace as identified by the Pope; terrorism and secularism. The first because it uses violence to impose one religion, the other because it marginalizes the religious energies of society, reduces freedom of religion, and humiliates the dignity of all persons to the material dimension alone.
Forgive the digression, but I have the strong impression that Benedict XVI does not willingly use the phrase 'spirit of Assisi'. He did not use the term when he announced his October 2011 initiative on January 1. In the letter he wrote to the Franciscans in Assisi in 2006 to mark the 20th anniversary of Assisi-I, he only used the term once, as follows:
In order not to misinterpret the meaning of what John Paul II wanted to achieve in 1986 and what, to use his own words, he habitually called the "spirit of Assisi", is important not to forget the attention paid on that occasion to ensuring that the interreligious Prayer Meeting did not lend itself to syncretist interpretations founded on a relativistic concept. www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/letters/2006/documents/hf_ben-xvi_let_20060902_xx-incontro-assisi...
When he made a pastoral visit to Assisi in 2007, he gave seven discourses (to the poor Clares, a homily, an Angelus message, to Bavarian nuns in Assisi, to the Franciscan community, to diocesan priests, religious and seminarians, and to young people), at which he only used the term once, in the homily:
The "spirit of Assisi", which has continued to spread throughout the world since that event, counters the spirit of violence and the abuse of religion as a pretext for violence. Assisi tells us[/DIM}[Not 'the spirit of Assisi tells us'] that faithfulness to one's own religious conviction, and especially faithfulness to the Crucified and Risen Christ, is not expressed in violence and intolerance but in sincere respect for the other, in dialogue, in a proclamation that appeals to freedom and reason and in the commitment to peace and reconciliation.
www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/homilies/2007/documents/hf_ben-xvi_hom_20070617_assisi...
Indeed, his discourses in Assisi were remarkable for being a distinct effort to 'restore' the real Francis of Assisi, not as the the original 'flower child' and 'peacenik' built up in modern myths like the 'spirit of Assisi', but as a young libertine who converted to Christ - i.e., repented of his earlier heedless life - to become a true and loyal man of the Church (even if he was not a priest) and an imitation of Christ.... I've also checked the address the Holy Father made to the Franciscan family in Castel Gandolfo in April 2009, on the occasion of the eighth centenary of the birth of Francis - not once does he mention the phrase 'spirit of Assisi'!
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 25/01/2011 18:25]