The summary or introduction to Dr. Ḥassan Muḥammad Wajīh’s text dating to 2005 was written by Cornelis Hulsman. We translated this article into English which was edited by Dr. Ḥassan Wajīh.
Between June 6 and 13 a group of students of the Faculty of Catholic Theology at Aachen University, Germany, visited Egypt, obtaining the support of the Centre for Arab-West Understanding in organizing their program in Egypt that was entirely focused on the role of religion in Egyptian society, including, of course, Muslim-Christian relations. Our NGO asked Dr. Ḥassan Muḥammad Wajīh Ḥassan to meet the students on June 8 and speak about his experiences in Muslim-Christian dialogue. Some students asked questions about Muslim-Christian dialogue. Others asked about Dr. Wajīh’s views about a then draft book review of Dutch journalist and Arabist Eildert Mulder about Dominican priest Fr. Dr. Emilio’s Platti’s latest book about the Qur’an. Dr. Wajīh provided Dialogue Across Borders with a commentary about this discussion and added this text he had published in al-Ahram, on April 17, 2005, upon the death of Pope John Paul II who had been the first Catholic Pope ever to visit the Azhar where he has made a tremendously positive impression on Muslim scholars.
In this text, Dr. Wajīh provides a list of points that should be taken into consideration for a fruitful dialogue between Muslims and Christians. These are a selection of points that Dr. Wajīh selected from a Papal document.
In dialogue we must not aim to attract the other to our faith and neither must we teach him how to speak or write, Dr. Ḥassan Wajīh believes, but our view of other believers must be an expression of the best we share in our common existence. We have to work with him through service and assistance.
Key in the discussion is Dr. Ḥassan Wajīh ’s quote from Pope John Paul II:
“It is necessary to warn against a Christian reading of the Holy Qur’an, even if the motive is a sincere interest in rapprochement and encounter.” Because the Muslim reserves the right to interpret the text; and the Christian must understand, in a deep way, why the revealed Book has such a profound effect on the heart and mind of the believer.”
Dialogue Across Borders editor-in-chief Cornelis Hulsman is of the opinion that this position of Pope John Paul II is hard to maintain since neither Muslim nor Western scholars, neither journalists and political activists of all kinds will feel bound by the late Pope’s guidance and beliefs that academic research and debates that aim at truth finding should include their right to interpret the texts they read but never should this result in slander and deliberate misrepresentations as was sadly done in Salman Rushdie’s book The Satanic Verses. Hulsman explained his position in a commentary following Dr. Ḥassan Wajīh ’s response to the Aachen University students.
