A response to "Final Declaration of the Yale Common Word Conference"

This response to the recent open letters exchanged between many Muslim and some Christian leaders is instructive in, amonge other things, highlighting the potential pitfalls in interfaith relating at official levels. Here are two sections from the Barnabas Fund comments on the Yale group's response:

The opening passage of the declaration includes the Qur’anic commandment to speak to Christians and Jews (Q 3:64), which is actually a call to them to convert to Islam. It also includes the “ascribe no partner” phrase, which is a Muslim critique of the Christian doctrines of the Trinity and the deity of Jesus. Muslims consider these to involve the most grievous sin of shirk (i.e. associating a created being with God) and those who hold them to be infidels (kafirun). It seems that the implications of this verse were not realised or discussed.

The affirmation of the Islamic source texts as “sacred texts” along with the Bible is ambiguous. Many will read it as implying that the Qur’an is a revealed word of God.

Worth reading the whole to get the picture.
� 2006 Barnabas Fund - "Final Declaration of the Yale Common Word Conference, July 2008": - 12 August 2008