TODAY and tomorrow nearly forty Muslim and Christian scholars from Britain and around the world will meet in the historic Guard Room at Lambeth Palace to take part in an unprecedented seminar entitled “Building Bridges: Overcoming Obstacles in Christian-Muslim Relations”.

One might be forgiven for imagining the odd raised eyebrow among the 17th and 18th century Archbishops of Canterbury whose portraits hang on the walls. Certainly in their day no such gathering would have been imaginable, but the challenges and opportunities facing Christians and Muslims today make it an event which we regard as absolutely necessary and deeply encouraging.

Cynics might mutter about shutting doors once horses have bolted. After all, September 11 apparently confirmed that Islam and the West could not live together in harmony.

Yes, those terrible events have injected new urgency into the pursuit of better Christian-Muslim relations. But the reality is that in recent years there has been a steady growth in the number of Christian and Muslim leaders and scholars stressing those themes within their own traditions which call them into dialogue. They do so in the conviction that they are serving God’s purposes in the wider world by reaching out beyond their own community, in friendship and cooperation, for the common good.

Christians, for example, can see in dialogue an obvious but demanding example of Christ’s commandment to love our neighbour as ourself. Love requires understanding. So, through dialogue, Christians may come a little closer to the attitude of St Francis, who is famously said to have prayed ‘not so much to be understood as to understand’ (a prayer which those involved in dialogue might do well to inscribe deep in their hearts).

Muslims are also finding that the experience of dialogue prompts fresh reflections on their relationship to the ‘other’. For example, a much quoted Qur’anic text states that religious uniformity is not God’s will (‘Had God willed, He would have made you one community’) and that the relationship between different faith-groups is to be characterized by a striving towards mutual dignity and respect.

Nevertheless, among both Muslims and Christians one can still encounter considerable suspicion of inter-faith dialogue. This may be related to a fear that all that is distinctive — and cherished — about one’s own faith will be lost; a concern that questions of truth and ultimate meaning, questions about the very nature of God and of God’s purposes for us, will be diplomatically disregarded in the pursuit of an unsatisfactory ‘lowest common denominator’.

That is certainly not the outcome we will be pursuing in this two-day seminar. In fact, one of the key challenges is how to handle difference. ‘The dignity of difference’ (a striking phrase of the Chief Rabbi’s) is a challenging but exciting reality we must all address in the conviction that our faith will not be diminished but enhanced. We can discover much that is good and true in those who are different from ourselves and at the same time can come to a deeper understanding of our own tradition.

A distinctive feature of this seminar is that it will be a meeting of scholars, and we make no apology for that. The beliefs and the values of Islam and Christianity influence the lives of billions of people. If we are to live together with a well informed and sympathetic understanding of each other there is clearly a crucial educational role for those who know our traditions well and can interpret them in today’s world.

As part of that learning process, we welcome the growing recognition in many areas of public life of the need for a better understanding of religion and of how it helps to shape and motivate attitudes and perceptions.

That understanding is important, we believe, both for faith communities and for those who lead the political, economic and social life of nations in the twenty first century.

An important priority is the potential of both Christianity and Islam to work together for peace and justice. In this sense our dialogue involves not just a reaching out to members of a different faith, but also a willingness to turn our attention to challenges like globalization, the environment and poverty.

Initiatives such as The World Faiths Development Dialogue, bringing together religions and financial institutions, demonstrate that the moral energy and grass-roots credibility of different faith communities can be harnessed in shared action to address some of the world’s most pressing problems.

What is likely to be the outcome of this gathering? In one sense, the event is valuable simply as an opportunity for listening and growing in mutual understanding — a model in itself, we hope, of how Christians and Muslims might relate to one another.

We are certainly not looking for quick fixes or slick conference slogans. There is much work to be done and we, along with many other Muslim and Christian leaders, are committed to it. Indeed, this joint article is itself a small token of that commitment.

So we do not expect our deliberations to change the world. But we do hope that our dialogue, and the published documents that flow from it, will offer fresh insights both for our own faith communities and for those beyond them. Insights about what lies at the heart of relations between Christianity and Islam and how we may travel together into the future for the benefit of all.

That journey involves building new bridges of friendship and respect. It is those bridges we will be working on today, tomorrow and in the years to come. And it is those bridges, we hope, that will help turn any raised eyebrows into nods of approval.

Dr Carey is the Archbishop of Canterbury and Dr Badawi is Principal of the Muslim College, London.

WHILE war between India and Pakistan cannot be ruled out, many observers tend to think it will not actually take place. Let us hope so. Assuming that it doesn’t, what lies ahead?

If India is not planning a war for purposes of conquest and occupation, or for crippling the state and government of Pakistan, why is it undertaking warlike talk and moves? In the first place, it thinks the time is now opportune for ending the Kashmir dispute on the ground and, preferably, also at the conference table. It wants to force Pakistan to take itself out as a party to the issue of the future of held-Kashmir. Pakistan’s role on the ground would cease if it stopped the flow of all kinds of aid — fighting men (“jihadis”), weapons, and funds — to the indigenous freedom fighters in Kashmir. In the absence of external help, the Kashmiri insurgency would weaken and India would be able to suppress it fairly quickly.

In embarking upon its current strategy, India has been helped by the fact that, following the events of September