For him, one opportunity for Muslims to indulge in reform came during the era of the French Revolution, when Muslims were obliged to face modern realities and to examine the fundamentals of their religion
Hans Kèng: Moral moorings
Roman Catholic theologian Hans Kèng was ordained a priest in 1954, and in 1962 he was appointed peritus, or special theological advisor, by Pope John XXIII. However, in December 1979, he was stripped of his licence to teach, largely because of his opposition to the doctrine of papal infallibility, expressed in his book Infallible? An Inquiry, published in 1971. Nevertheless, Kèng has not given up his quest to reform the Catholic Church, and he is both a respected Christian theologian and a widely recognised authority on world religions, especially on the "Abrahamic" religions -- Islam, Christianity and Judaism. Until his retirement in 1996, Kèng was professor of ecumenical theology and director of the Institute for Ecumenical Research at the University of Tèbingen in Germany, where he worked with his friend Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI. Today, he heads the Global Ethic Foundation. Following the 11 September 2001 attacks on New York and Washington, the then UN secretary-general Kofi Annan appointed Kèng a member of an international group of eminent persons brought together to promote dialogue among civilisations. Kèng was a natural choice for the position, since he was familiar with the Judeo-Christian Bible, the Hindu Bhagavad-Gita, the discourses of the Buddha and Confucius, and the Quran. Kèng's works include Does God Exist? An Answer for Today (1980); Eternal Life? (1984); Christianity and Chinese Religions (1988 with Julia Ching); Paradigm Change in Theology (1989); The Catholic Church (2002); and My Struggle for Freedom (2003). He was recently named one of the world's top 100 intellectuals by the British magazine Prospect.
Interview by Gamal Nkrumah
'The history of Islam is about a third shorter than Christianity, it is no less complex. The more Islam spread, the less monolithic it became'
It is mid-morning, and the calm of the corner of the Cairo hotel in which Hans Kèng explains his views on Islam and inter-religious dialogue is disturbed by the infuriating ring-tones of mobile phones.
Misreading the Muslim world has had grave ramifications, he says, and he infuses his understanding of the history of Islam with a wealth of detail and a kind of unanticipated solemnity. "There will be no peace among nations without peace among religions," he states, matter-of- factly, and his deepest desire is precisely to help bring about an atmosphere of greater understanding between Muslims and Christians.
Kèng is unhappy with the current state of affairs and particularly about growing tensions between Muslims and Christians in the West. What he advocates above all is a common ethical framework for humanity as a whole, which must "demolish the walls of prejudice stone by stone and build bridges of dialogue, rather than erect new barriers of hatred, hostility and vengeance." In particular, for this Swiss-born Christian theologian, Westerners must build bridges of dialogue with Muslims.
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