U.S. expert: Catholic history could be relevant to Muslim struggles

Published: 2006-01-19

ROME (CNS) -- The story of the Catholic Church's embrace of religious liberty may have relevance to the current internal struggles of the Muslim world, said a U.S. expert on church affairs. Scott Appleby, director of the Joan B. Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana, told a Rome conference Jan. 17 that internal pluralism exists in Islam and "this is good news." "It's good news for Islam that there are competing traditions and voices and interpretations of what 'jihad' might mean and how it might be applied," he said. He cited the emergence of courageous Muslims who speak about the options of nonviolence in Islam, about democratization and about acceptance of a pluralistic society. It's a long process, but this kind of internal debate ultimately opens up alternatives to violence, he said. Ultimately, he said, demographic and economic pressures favor the pluralists in the Islamic world. Appleby's speech detailed the internal evolution within the Catholic Church that led to the Second Vatican Council's Declaration on Religious Freedom ("Dignitatis Humanae").

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