The Oasis International Foundation is an interfaith foundation established in 2004. It was based on an idea of Cardinal Angelo Scola to promote mutual knowledge and understanding between Christians and Muslims, with special focus on the reality of Christian minorities in predominantly Muslim countries. Oasis relies on a network of international contacts. In addition to Cardinal Scola its Promotional Committee includes Patriarch Bechara Boutros al-Rahi (Lebanon), Cardinals Philippe Barbarin (Lyon), Josip Bozanic (Zagreb), Péter Erdő (Budapest), Christoph Schönborn (Vienna), Patriarch Fouad Twal (Jerusalem) and Bishops Camillo Ballin (Kuwait), Mounged El-Hachem (Nuncio in Kuwait), Paul Hinder (Emirates), Jean-Clément Jeanbart (Alep), Maroun Lahham (Tunis), Anthony Lobo (Islamabad), Francisco Javier Martínez (Granada) and Joseph Powathil (Changanacherry). The scientific committee includes Islam experts, philosophers, sociologists, historians and legal experts.
Angelo Scola is an Italian Cardinal of the Catholic Church, philosopher and theologian. He was Archbishop of Milan from 2011 to 2017. He had served as Patriarch of Venice from 2002 to 2011. He has been a cardinal since 2003 and a bishop since 1991.
Christians are people who follow or adhere to Christianity, a monotheistic Abrahamic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus Christ. The words Christ and Christian derive from the Koine Greek title Christós (Χριστός), a translation of the Biblical Hebrew term mashiach (מָשִׁיחַ).
Patriarch Moran Mor Bechara Boutros al-Rahi is the 77th Maronite Patriarch of Antioch, and head of the Maronite Church, a position he has held since 15 March 2011, succeeding Patriarch Nasrallah Boutros Sfeir. Rahi was made a cardinal on 24 November 2012 by Pope Benedict XVI.
Islamic philosophy is a development in philosophy that is characterised by coming from an Islamic tradition. Two terms traditionally used in the Islamic world are sometimes translated as philosophy—falsafa, which refers to philosophy as well as logic, mathematics, and physics; and Kalam, which refers to a rationalist form of Islamic theology.
Over the centuries of Islamic history, Muslim rulers, Islamic scholars, and ordinary Muslims have held many different attitudes towards other religions. Attitudes have varied according to time, place and circumstance.
The Patriarch of Venice is the ordinary bishop of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Venice. The bishop is one of the few patriarchs in the Latin Church of the Catholic Church. Presently, the only advantage of this purely formal title is the bishop's place of honor in papal processions. In the case of Venice, an additional privilege allows the patriarch, even if he is not a cardinal, the use of the colour red in non-liturgical vestments. In that case, the red biretta is topped by a tuft, as is the custom with other bishops who are not cardinals.
Hinduism has over 1.1 billion adherents worldwide. Nepal (81.3%) and India (79.8%) are countries with Hindus being the majority of their respective populations. Along with Christianity (31.5%), Islam (23.2%), Hinduism is one of the three major religions of the world by percentage of population. Hinduism is the third largest religion in the world after Christianity and Islam.
Islamization, Islamicization or Islamification is the process of a society's shift towards Islam, such as found in Sudan, Pakistan, Iran, Malaysia, or Algeria. In contemporary usage, it may refer to the perceived imposition of an Islamist social and political system on a society with an indigenously different social and political background.
Michael Louis Fitzgerald is a British Roman Catholic prelate of the Catholic Church and an expert on Muslim-Christian relations. He has had the rank of archbishop since 2002. At his retirement in 2012 he was the papal nuncio to Egypt and delegate to the Arab League. He headed the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue from 2002 to 2006.
Harun Nasution (1919–1998) was an Indonesian scholar who described himself as a neo-Mutazilite, a modern follower of the medieval movement of the Mutazila. His work was part of a small but significant trend within Islamic thought to champion rationalist and humanist principles.
Sunni Islam is the dominant religion in Jordan. Muslims make up about 93% of the country's population. There are also a small number of Ahmadi Muslims, and some Shiites. Many Shia are Iraqi and Lebanese refugees.
Jordan contains some of the oldest Christian communities in the world, their presence dating back to the crucifixion of Jesus Christ early in the 1st century AD. Christians today make up about 4% of the population, down from 20% in 1930, but their absolute numbers increased. This is due to high immigration rates of Muslims into Jordan, higher emigration rates of Christians to the west and higher birth rates for Muslims. Jordanian Christians number around 250,000, all of whom are Arabic-speaking, according to a 2014 estimate by the Orthodox Church. The study excluded minority Christian groups and the thousands of western, Iraqi and Syrian Christians residing in Jordan.
Christianity in Kuwait is a minority religion, accounting for 18%-20% of the country's population, or 650,000 - 750,000 people. Kuwait's Christians can be divided into 2 groups. The first group are Christians who are native Kuwaitis numbering approximately between 200 and 400 people. The second group, who make up the majority of Christians in Kuwait, are expatriates from various countries around the world. There are also a number of believers in Christ from a Muslim background in the country, though many are not citizens. A 2015 study estimates some 350 such Christians in the country that are ex Muslim.
The Arab League is a social, cultural and economic grouping of 22 Arab states in the Arabic speaking world. As of 2016, the combined population of all the Arab states was around 407-420 million people.
A Common Word between Us and You is an open letter, dated 13 October 2007, from leaders of the Islamic religion to leaders of the Christian religion. It calls for peace between Muslims and Christians and tries to work for common ground and understanding between both religions, in line with the Qur'anic command: "Say: 'O People of the Scripture! come to a common word as between us and you: that we worship none but God" and the Biblical commandment to love God, and one's neighbour. In 2008 the initiative was awarded the "Eugen Biser Award", and the "Building Bridges Award" from the UK's Association of Muslim Social Scientists.
Islam is the official religion in Kuwait, and the majority of the citizen population are Muslim. There are also small native Christian and Bahá'í populations. Most expatriates in Kuwait are Muslim, Hindu, Christian or Buddhist.
The Constitution provides for freedom of religion, and the government generally respected this right in practice. Buddhism is the state religion. There was no change in the status of respect for religious freedom by the government during the period covered by this report, and government policy continued to contribute to the generally free practice of religion. There were limited reports of societal abuses or discrimination based on religious belief or practice.
Muslims constitute 96 percent of the population of the Gambia according to CIA factbook, making Gambia a Salafist Islamic country. The vast majority are Salafi Sunnis influenced with Salafism, of which the main orders represented are Tijaniyah, Qadiriyah. Except for Ahmadiyya, Sufi orders pray together at common mosques. A small percentage of Muslims, predominantly immigrants from South Asia, do not ascribe to any traditional Islamic school of thought.
Prince Ghazi bin Muhammad is a Jordanian prince, professor of philosophy, and a direct descendant of the Islamic prophet Muhammad. He is the son of Prince Muhammad bin Talal of Jordan and his first wife, Princess Firyal. He is a grandson of King Talal of Jordan and thus a first cousin of King Abdullah II and thirteenth in the line of succession to the Jordanian throne. He is well known for his religious initiatives, about which a book was published in 2013.
Ahmadiyya is an Islamic movement in Indonesia. The earliest history of the Community in Indonesia dates back to the early days of the Second Caliph, when during the summer of 1925, roughly two decades prior to the Indonesian revolution, a missionary of the Community, Rahmat Ali, stepped on Indonesia's largest island, Sumatra, and established the movement with 13 devotees in Tapaktuan, in the province of Aceh. The Community has an influential history in Indonesia's religious development, yet in the modern times it has faced increasing intolerance from religious establishments in the country and physical hostilities from radical Muslim groups. The Association of Religion Data Archives estimates around 400,000 Ahmadi Muslims, spread over 542 branches across the country.
Sayyid Ibraheem Khaleel Al Bukhari is one of the India's most recognised Muslim personalities and listed in The Muslim 500. He is the founder and chairman of Ma'din Academy, an educational and charity venture based in Malappuram, Kerala, and advisor of International Interfaith Harmony initiative.
