Oasis 11

In the cinema of today (but also in that of yesterday) what still manages to surprise and move us is the crossing of two human pathways, where the real denominator common to everyone emerges: the need for love and happiness. And it is not just by chance that often a master and a disciple  come to meet at that crossroads

A prohibition on excessive profits and usury, the obligation to give alms to the poor: these are the bases of the economic and financial life of Islam,derived directly from verses in the Koran. In them there is no condemnation of wealth or social difference which are seen to be natural and permitted by God.

Multiculturality as an ‘idea’ (or multiculturalism) has been placed in a state of crisis by multiculturality as a ‘fact.’ The result is schools pervaded by tensions and paralysis whereas it is specifically in classrooms that the real match of open dialogue and a shared journey will be played out.

According to the Sura of Women, God created human beings from one person or soul and the term used to define this one person or soul evokes both sexes. Amongst the ninety-nine names for God, ‘the merciful’and ‘the compassionate’ stand out. Etymologically, they refer back to the maternal womb.

In 1854 the first school of the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem was created. Today there are forty-five schools in Jordan, Palestine and Israel, with over twenty-thousand pupils and a staff of two-thousand people. A reality of extraordinary commitment and testimony to the dramatic situation in the region.

Crisis or no crisis, the march of the Emirates from the desert to the ‘super metropolis’ has not stopped. And it continues to swell the ranks. Of the seven million residents, only 15% are autochthonous. Indians, Bangladeshis, Filipinos, Middle-Eastern people: the colony of workers coming from every corner of the globe is involved in a colossal building experiment destined to last another twenty years.

The Muslim mystic and jurist al-Ghazâlî exalts the opposition  between abstract and formal knowledge which is connected with ‘gratifying [the] ego and with worldly exploits,’  and spiritual endeavour, which, instead, generates good actions

Education according to the millennial experience of the Catholic Church that has attended to how to transmit its patrimony

'It was mainly for this purpose that Christ came, to wit, that man might learn ho much God loves him; and that he might learn this, to the intent that he might be kindled to the love of Him by whom he was first loved': for St. Augustine this was the essential core of Christian education.

The challenge of relationships with the other, those who belong to another culture or another religion, affects the whole of the educational process which begins in schools but goes well beyond them. Italy, which does not have strong ethnic or ideological paradigms, can meet this challenge better than other countries. 

In the Lebanon the Feast of the Annunciation, which by now has been celebrated for three years by Christians and Muslims through shared initiatives, has been made a national holiday by the government. In this country of eighteen confessions, devotion to the Mother of Jesus thus also becomes an opportunity for mutual understanding.