With this issue Oasis continues its reflection on the subject of traditions which are understood as concrete locations for cultural interpretations of faiths. Whereas the last issue was on ‘thinking about tradition’, or interpreting it, on identifying, that is to say, its nature and its ‘role’ in the history of individuals and in the itinerary of the great religious faiths, now, without any claim to be exhaustive, we seek to explore the current dynamics of the Christian and Muslim traditions. Or in other words, the trials that each of them find that they are facing so as to be still perceivable as living bodies and not only treasures, or even relicts, of the past. First of all, the sifting process of modernity, which pursues them with its great philosophical and political questions and its general temptation of indifferentism (to which, surprisingly, a certain fundamentalist phenomenon is not extraneous), but then the whole complex of the contemporary which in every latitude offers new challenges and unprecedented paths.

The fundamental aspects of understanding the vital role and the irreplaceable value of culture (which, following the itinerary outlined in this issue, is closely connected with tradition) have naturally been the subject of ample and decisive pages of the Magisterium of the Church and Christian thought. We offer two moments of this thought, which attracted in a completely special way both Karol Wojtyla-John Paul II and Joseph Ratzinger-Benedict XVI. By the first, the address given to UNESCO in 1980 remains one of the most emblematic and fecund passages of his entire papacy. By the second, the speech to an assembly of Asian bishops not only presents very notable consonances with the address of John Paul II to UNESCO on the relationship between faith and culture but admirably describes the first encounter between Christian faith and the Hellenistic world, providing very topical perspectives for contemporary intercultural dialogue. The third part of this section is suitably linked to this subject and it is on a classic of Arab literature: that Bîrûnî who around the year 1000 pointed out a pathway to know the other and his culture.

Those who are familiar with news about the events that take place between the Mediterranean Sea and Europe know that in unsafe large boats ploughing those waters are crowded desperate people from various countries. A suffering humanity trying to flee from homelands that have become uninhabitable and to move towards a new life. Amongst them numerous Eritreans and this raises questions and generates interest. Whereas the reason for the flight of Somalis can be taken for granted, an explanation that is equally valid for this other nation in the Horn of Africa
is not immediately evident. Since the period of the war of independence, the destiny of Eritrea has entered an opaque zone of information: little news and little curiosity. The report of our envoy thus becomes of great interest.
 

Articles, analyses and testimony from various countries and on various subjects. In this issue: the post-election period in Iran that shook the world; the post-election period in Indonesia that calmed the world; the moving diary of a visit of the Pope to the Holy Land kept by someone who accompanied him at close quarters; the complex craft of the translator who, while he interprets, is also exposed to the risk of ‘betraying’; the foundations of the Shiite faith; the surprising results of research carried out into the structure of the Koran; and the second part of the biography of Georges Anawati, the father of Catholic Islamic studies.

In the books of this issue: the Jewish tradition in philosophical debate; why the question of God cannot be eluded; what place should be given (back) to culture; the Koran and the figure of Jesus; the proposals of a Muslim ‘counter-preacher’; when Islam draws near to bioethics; an investigation of the heart of Hamas; and lastly, to close this section, a look at this season’s cinema.