Oasis 11

A conversation with Abdullahi Ahmed an-Na‘im, a Sudanese, a lecturer  in the United States of America, a disciple of the great reformist thinker Muhammad Taha, who was executed in Khartoum in 1985. ‘Universality must be built  through the idea of progressive consensus. The use of brute force must be avoided.’  

From Amman to Aqaba and on to Anjara, following the pathways indicated by ‘Our Lady of Peace,’ an institute for receiving and educating disabled children that has spread throughout the country. Founded by the Jordanian Catholic community, it responds to the needs of all families, without any distinction.

The heavy challenges that the Algerian school system has to face:the quality of teaching, the harmonious development of society, economic growth. On the one hand it is necessary to ‘educate the educators’ and, on the other, to generate in young people a critical spirit, a taste for questioning and a capacity to understand vital questions.

In the largest Muslim country in the world the educational system as well is based upon the five principles of the Pancasila, the ideological architrave on which the state rests. The Constitution upholds the right to religious freedom and in schools religious education, as well as respect for different identities, is assured.

The former British premier presents the readers of Oasis with the programme produced by his foundation. ‘In the global life of the twenty-first century we must promote understanding between believers and project a positive image of religious identity.’ A project at work in eleven countries.

In the current context, education displays a ‘crisis of meaning.’We receive a great deal of education in behaviour but none in freedom.Society requires skills and efficiency and in exchange guarantees every kind of right or claim. The fundamental question is our vision of man.  

Beirut. In a city that is reborn and at risk every day, an interview with Georges Corm. A Maronite Christian, a politician, a writer, a lecturer and a polemicist, a multi-faceted man who, like so many of his fellow countrymen, goes against the mainstream. 'His' Lebanon is different from the clichés and traditional interpretations and shines out because of its vitality intertwined with pain and drama.  

The role of education is decisive for the development of relations between Muslims and Christians and in combating fundamentalist tendencies that seek to separate the two communities. Many countries accept the presence of Christian schools, others do not. The special situation of North Africa.

Meeting of the Holy Father  Benedict XVI with Representatives of the Muslim Community of Cameroon  Apostolic Nunciature of Yaoundé, Thursday, 19 March 2009