Thought for the Day, 4 December 2006

Clifford Longley

The sight of the Pope praying in the Blue Mosque in Istanbul last week - facing Mecca as he did so, what's more - suggests that religion itself might yet have the answer to the problem that religion so starkly presents. That problem, in a nutshell, is the notion of a clash of civilisations advanced by the American academic Samuel Huntington: that the mainly Christian West and world Islam are on an almost inevitable collision course that could even end in a third world war.

But in war you don't go into the tents of your enemy, greet him as a brother and pray with him to his God - which was the symbolic meaning of Pope Benedict's powerful and dramatic action in Turkey's capital. In so far as the Pope is a spokesperson for the Christian West - and I much prefer him for that role than any other contender - he was offering peace, and it was an offer based on respect. Many countries in Europe will take a lead from that, and it may help Turkey considerably in its bid to become a member of the European Union. But it will also help community relations in Britain, for Britain's Muslims were watching the Pope's visit closely. And they were pleased and relieved by what they saw.

Yet the Pope has in the past been identified with the view that Europe was essentially still a Christian continent, and by implication therefore Muslims would never be better than guests inside its borders. Something seems to have changed his mind. He was very interested in a lecture the Archbishop of Canterbury gave in Rome on his recent visit, about the importance of Saint Benedict as patron saint of Europe. He even studied it in his private apartment.

Dr Williams believes Europe has yet more to learn from the founder of the Benedictine monastic tradition, about how to handle diversity.

He used a metaphor from ecology, the study of the natural world. The variety of religious faith in human society was analogous to bio- diversity among living things, he argued. We don't necessarily understand how it works, but we mess with it at our peril. And biodiversity offers a rich treasure house of resources, if we only discover how to understand and use them. Above all biodiversity implies respect and care, not the wanton imposition of uniformity come what may. And the same is true of cultural and religious pluralism.

So I think the Pope was saying in God's providence we don't know the ultimate meaning of the existence of members of non-Christian faiths among us, Muslims especially. But we accept and respect it as God's gift. To reject the presence of Muslims in Europe, and indeed to reject Turkey's bid to be part of Europe, could be turning away God's gift. Let's not do that.