LONDON — More than 130 Muslim scholars from around the globe yesterday called for peace and understanding between Islam and Christianity, saying “the very survival of the world itself is perhaps at stake.”
In an unprecedented letter to Pope Benedict XVI and other Christian leaders, 138 Muslim scholars said that finding common ground between the world’s biggest faiths was not simply a matter for polite dialogue.
“If Muslims and Christians are not at peace, the world cannot be at peace,” the scholars wrote. “With the terrible weaponry of the modern world; with Muslims and Christians intertwined everywhere as never before, no side can unilaterally win a conflict between more than half of the world’s inhabitants.
“Our common future is at stake. The very survival of the world itself is perhaps at stake.”
They added that Islam and Christianity agree that love of God and neighbor are the two most important commandments of their faiths.
Relations between Muslims and Christians have been strained as al Qaeda has struck around the world and as the U.S. and other Western countries have intervened in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Such a joint letter is unprecedented in Islam, which has no central authority that speaks on behalf of all worshippers.
The list of signatories includes senior figures throughout the Middle East, Asia, Africa, Europe and North America. They represent Sunni, Shi’ite and Sufi schools of Islam.
Among them were the grand muftis of Egypt, the Palestinian territories, Oman, Jordan, Syria, Bosnia and Russia, and many imams and scholars. Both Shi’ites and Sunnis represented war-torn Iraq.
Mustafa Cagrici, the mufti who prayed with Benedict in Istanbul’s Blue Mosque last year, also was on the list, as was the popular Egyptian television preacher Amr Khaled.
The letter was addressed to the pope, leaders of Orthodox Christian churches, Anglican leader Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams and the heads of the world alliances of the Lutheran, Methodist, Baptist and Reformed churches.
Archbishop Williams said he welcomed it as “indicative of the kind of relationship for which we yearn in all parts of the world.”
“The call to respect, peace and good will should now be taken up by Christians and Muslims at all levels and in all countries,” he said.
A Vatican official in Rome said the Roman Catholic Church would not comment until it had time to read the letter.
Aref Ali Nayed, one of the signatories and a senior adviser to the Cambridge Interfaith Program at Cambridge University in Britain, said the signatories represented the “99.9 percent of Muslims” who follow mainstream schools and oppose extremism.
“In Islam we have had a problem for some time now, where the mainstream voices are drowned out by a minority that choose violence,” he said.
Benedict sparked Muslim protests last year with a speech hinting that Islam was violent and irrational. It prompted 38 Muslim scholars to write a letter challenging his view of Islam and accepting his call for serious Christian-Muslim dialogue.
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