Intercultural dialogue

One of the things CEOSS does is promote dialogue between Egyptian Muslims and Christians and between Egyptians and Europeans. One of the Danish meetings the other day was about this program, and CEOSS had brought in someone from the prominent website Islam Online to talk about his experience in dialogue groups. He talked about how he had been scared to interact with Christians and assumed they all thought the same (weird) things. But through involvement in this dialogue he found that some Christians are good people, respect others, don't think he's necessarily a terrorist... etc. A victory for "positive co-existence."

Then, since the group he was talking to was largely Danish, he inevitably turned to the cartoon issue. He emphasized how open he was to dialogue and how good it was to build relationships, but that dialogue will fail if people keep insulting the prophet. In other words, everything is cool if you act according to our rules.

The Danish bishop responded by trying to explain their perspective. 1. Denmark is a free country, where people can say what they want. 2. In a free country religion is sometimes derided, jockingly or otherwise. The newspapers often make remarks about Christians, for example. 3. A lot of newspapers reprinted the cartoons that hadn't the first time in 2006, in an effort to demonstrate solidarity with the cartoonist and his worldview, in effect saying, "If you kill him, you'll have to kill all of us."

The blogger nodded often during the bishop's explanation and didn't say much in response, except to reiterate his point: free speech is fine, just don't do stuff like this.

End result: impasse.