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A Message from His Beatitude Ignatius IV (Hazim)
Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Antioch and all the East
to His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI
17th September, 2006-09-18
To Your Most Venerable Holiness Pope Benedict XVI
Salutations and best wishes for your health:
We have followed with extreme anxiety your statements and the angry reactions that accompanied them over the course of the last days. In this regard, we would like to clarify to Your Holiness some essential points that Eastern Christians live by and believe in. More than any others, they have knowledge, experience and understanding of Christianity and Islam together, for they have been in a state of coexistence, cooperation and harmony from the beginning of the Islamic mission until now.
We have established the best of relationships, built on respect for religions and for everyone's freedom to practice rites as he wishes and according to his belief in the teachings of his religion and the principles of his divine law. This springs from the fact that both the essential and preeminent relationship between Christianity and Islam, and the culture of individual coexistence, have sprung from the East, from this land of sacred religions. Pope John Paul II praised - as you know - this coexistence and relationship, which he knew and read about, and which he observed during his historical visit to Syria. The accounts of this visit, what was written and what was said about it have become part of Vatican history and one of the stages of development that the late Pope desired.
We do not wish to plunge into discussing the relationship of Christianity to Islam and Islam to Christianity - a relationship filled with standpoints consecrating coexistence and mutual respect, which we cannot pass by in these circumstances. Likewise, we do not wish to recall that the longest Surah appearing in the Noble Qur'an speaks with emphatic respect and appreciation for Christianity.
We, however would like to point out that talking about religion as an academic subject of research does not rise to the truth that religion is a doctrine and a faith practiced by believers. Everyone has the right, the full right, to practice his religious rites as he wishes. There is no room here to consider religion as more of an intellectual topic than a matter of belief, for discussing it in this way touches the understanding and belief. We are hoping that you may take part in raising the essence of religions from the field of dialogues, intellectual efforts and citations that have been effaced by time, and that there may be a complete rapprochement of these doctrinal fixed points of the religions from a contemporary perspective, and not from the perspective of the Middle Ages.
We assert that religion is not so much for the practice of intellectual and philosophical refinement as it is for living and coexisting in love, so far as this harmonizes with beliefs, divine laws and rites. This is what has specially marked the East, which we have lived in from the beginning of the heavenly messages until now.
We ask for your prayers and we extend to you our best wishes.
Ignatius IV, Patriarch of Antioch and all the East
Ignatius IV
Greek Orthodox Patriarch
of Antioch and all the East
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