Interreligious and Intercultural Understanding Panel, Live Blogging - Friday, March 7, 2008 17:15 - 1 Comment

Live Blogging - Interreligious & Intercultural Understanding Panel

17:15 - Starts the presentation and inauguration of one of the lasts two panels.

17:16 - Thomas Banchoff, director of the Berkley Center for Peace, Religion and World Affairs at Georgetown University, is introduced.

17:16 - DeGioia, president of Georgetown University, is introduced.

17:16 - Dean Jane McAuliffe, Dean of Georgetown College, is introduced.

17:16 - Sadiq Al-Mahdi, former Prime Minister of Sudan, is introduced.

17: 16 - Schlomo Ben-Amin, former Israeli Foreign Minister & Vice President of the Toledo International Centre for Peace.

17:19 - John J. DeGioia: “I will offer different perspectives for religious understanding”.

17:22 - “We denied those who are different from our own”.

17:23 - “Georgetown University was the 1st American university to hire a full-time rabbi”.

17:24 - “Global Conversations on Religion are offered by Georgetown.”

17:28 - “Most people think that Muslims respects the West, say the statistics”.

17:32 - Banchoff: “We are working hard to take the message out to others”.

17:33 - “National Competitiveness, Religious diversity, so many complex ways around the world, the world of terror, is like watching the controversy of the cartoons”.

17:35 - “Doing businesses around the world requires more understanding of different religions and cultures”.

17:37 - “We try to bring these issues out of the Religious campus and to the Law Center and Health Center”.

17:38 - Ben-Amin: “Any practical solution of political Islam does not go further than outside a box that is all military in the Israeli or American case”.

17:39 - “Not every Islamic Group is Al-Qaeda, nor military”.

17:40 - “There are Islamic Groups that are willing to have a political response”

17:42 - “I believe, aside of what Israel’s position is, and America’s, Hamas is not far off to becoming one of these (Political Group)”.

17:43 - “Once they went became political they needed to answer to the will of the population”.

17:46 - “Israel is not capable of maintaining a two states solution”.

17:47 - “We need to reach a settlement with democracy”.

17:47 - “Corruption is the reason they were defeated, not Islam, they voted for Hamas because it was the only alternative”.

17:48 - “Secular nationalism failed in producing a State that is for reform”.

17:50 - “National movements had to split before reaching the promise land (always been a radical wing)”.

17:53 - Banchoff thanked Ben-Amin for his reflections.

17:54 - McAuliffe: “I will give a theological point of view to these issues”.

17:55 - “The context has been the same for over seven years”.

17:57 - “The methodology combines open sessions that each participant addresses to each other and the general public also can have a word on it”.

17:58 - “The focus of our sessions has changed in these six years”.

18:00 - “This methodology is not new but ours really works”.

18:01 - “There are two factors we are dealing with in this global world: globalization of religion itself and affiliation fluidity”.

18:03 - “Multilateral Religious: (google) “I’m a Catholic but I’m really into Buddhism”.

18:05 - “We are moving into so many religions so fast that it will complicate even more a real understanding”.

18:06 - Banchoff presents Al-Mahdi.

18:06 - Al-Mahdi: “I’m going to speak straight on these issues; I’m going to speak in black and white”.

18:08 - “Confrontational directions”.

18:10 - “Lebanon and Sudan, two success stories that now, in fact, are falling”.

18:11 - “Intellectual levels have been suffering; intellectual understanding as well. We need to see. The issue is to reconcile”.

18:12 - “But all of this intellectual coming together is not enough”.

18:14 - “Political, military and economic points are being address as religious ones, and this has to change”.

18:14 - “In normal times Islam is not aggressive”.

18:17 - “Despotism (Politically Denied), and social injustice, colonization, occupation and cultural hegemony: these are the causes behind the Muslim crisis.”

18:19 - “We need a credible strategy to solve all of these points”.

18:20 - “The United Nations are too concerned in security itself, and it should be focused more on human security”.

18:22 - “Reactionary/Reconciliation: struggle”.

18:24 - “Universal Values”.

18:25 - “Whoever expresses himself as (not only in terms of statistics) open minded, and they are (Muslims) are astonished that a man such as Obama can come into a political campaign”.

18:28- Applause fills the room as Al-Mahdi finishes his speech.

18:30 - Tom Banchoff begins to field questions from the audience.