Christian Muslim dialogue

Some collected information/ not necessary to be included in the research

 

https://marmoussa.info/

 

Polemic: a strong verbal or written attack on someone or something.

 

Jejuest from Italy: paoloGallilio

Moestry in Syria: DierMarmosa / Christian community / Christian Muslim dialogue / from a Christian perspective / in love with Islam: believing in Jesus 2009 in Paris / Dall’Oglio

The example they want to give in Der Marmosa as the Muslim and Christian live together/ why it is in Syria? What is the importance of Syria?

 

 

Paolo Dall’Oglio, Amoureux de l’Islam, croyantenJésus, 2009.

Paolo Dall’Oglio, In Love with Islam: Believing in Jesus, 2009.

 

 

In the sixth century, it is said, an Ethiopian hermit lived in a cave there. He was Saint Moses of Abyssinia, son of a king. He refused the crown, preferring to strive toward the Kingdom of God, and died as a martyr.[1]After his death monks built a small church, founding a monastery in his name. For the past two hundred years it stood vacant, fallen into disrepair, until 1983, when the monastery was rediscovered by the Italian Jesuit Father Paolo dell’Oglio. He spent ten days there in meditation, finally deciding to restore the monastery and found a new religious community.[2]

In 1983, a Jesuit Father rediscovered an 11^thcentury monastery in the Syrian desert.

 

In 2003, the renovation of the church was finally completed, bringing to light frescoes from the 11th and 12th centuries. Long before completion the little jewel in the middle of the desert began to attract pilgrims – and it proved so popular that the little monastic community decided to add several more buildings in a simple, archaic style to house visitors and pilgrims.Today eight monks and nuns live in Mar Musa, all of them around thirty years old. It may be the only monastic community in the world where men and women pray and work together, while living separately.[3]

 

A new building houses the nuns’ quarters and the wing for female visitors. The men’s quarters have been expanded as well. The monastery dwellers lead a very simple life – having chosen poverty voluntarily, they dress in dark cotton habits.They tend the garden, keep goats and bees. But the monastery also has computers and an Internet connection – for Mar Musa exists in the virtual realm of the Internet.[4]

 

In the heart of the Syrian desert, Paolo Dall’Oglio, SJ, founded the monastic community of Deir Mar Moussa. Dedicated to Christian-Islamic dialogue, the community, mixed and ecumenical, welcomes thousands of Muslims as well as visitors of all nationalities throughout the year. With thirty years of experience and commitment, Paolo Dall’Oglio, in dialogue with Eglantine Gabaix-Hialé, here takes a stand on the relationship between the Church, more specifically the Catholic Church, and the Muslim religion. How to live together and what is the point of living together? What is the originality of the two religions? How are evangelization and inculturation of the Christian faith carried out in a Muslim environment? What is the theological value of Muhammad’s prophecy from a Christian point of view? Faced with the resurgence of exclusive theologies, fashionable since a certain fear of Islam surfaced, the reader will find here a position of open theology, explicitly assumed as inclusive, the radical demands of the Christian faith y being experienced in depth. The ambition of this work is to offer a hope that only the commitment in favor of the other will make legitimate and realistic.

 

“The monastery “Deir Mar Musa” in the desert between Lebanon and Syria is an attraction for believers from all over the world. The convent is an oasis of intercultural and interreligious understanding.”[5] Stephen Starr reports from Syria.

Mar Musa is an oasis of tranquility, meditation and self-discovery

 

“The desert has a spirituality of its very own,” feels Brother Frederique. And, he says, it is always a very special thing to encounter the spirit of God – or Allah – in the desert.Brother Frederique from France, who has lived in the monastery for a year now.[6]

 

 

 

Deir Mar Musa: A Haven for Christian-MuslimDialogue

 

Paolo Dall’Oglio

After completing a Doctorate in comparative religion and Islamic studies at the PontificiaUniversitàGregoriana in Rome, Father Paolo Dall’Oglio single-handedly restored the site, setting the first stone in cement from 1982.Deir Mar Musa’s physical and reputational restoration is to a major part down to the efforts, determination and belief of a single man.Speaking from a library room in the monastery Father Paolo looks and sounds like he understands political and social observer to boot, displaying a nuanced knowledge of contemporary currents in social and political affairs.

“I came here as a student of Arabic and lived in Lebanon and Syria beginning from the 1970s. I asked a priest in Damascus if he knew of a place where I could go to in order to study and pray, he suggested to come up here, and here I am today,”[7] explained the priest who was awarded the Anna Lindh Euro-Mediterranean Award for Interfaith Dialogue on behalf of Deir Mar Musa in 2006.[8]

 

A Jesuit priest, he does not see Christianity as being a superior religion. “I think globalization has set in motion a series of events and established a new mindset. People are on the move, as you can see right here in this monastery every day. Ideas have new venues from where to be exchanged and people are getting to see everything through the internet. So we have had an explosion of information and as a result everyone in this region knows about the Danish cartoon episode and Iraq etc.,” he said.[9]

Father Paolo walks the mountains with a cane alone at night after mass and dinner. He makes himself known to all visitors and can mingle with foreigners and locals alike, in fluent Arabic.

 

The monastery: moving with the times

Atop a mountain in the Syrian heartland lies a monastery

from the mountains dividing Lebanon and Syria, Deir Mar Musa, the monastery has been a bedrock of local coexistence and national dialogue between Muslim and Christian.

 

The monastery was founded by Mar Musa al-Habashi, or Saint Moses of Abyssinia who as legend has it, was the son of a king of Ethiopia. Refusing to accept his future as laid out on front of him, Saint Moses decided to become a Christian monk and later travelled to Syria, before establishing the monastery.

While the monastery has been reconstructed over the last 25 years, with funding sourced locally and from Rome, the monastery’s church is said to date back to the 6th century. Christians apparently sought refuge in holes dug into the mountain rock close to the monastery to escape persecution which began sporadically from the 8th century.

​​On the church walls are at least four separate sets of frescos depicting angels and demons, and man appearing to be caught in a war of good and evil between the two.

Some of the frescos appear damaged, according to Shadi from Damascus who helps out at the monastery, by extremists from centuries ago at a time when Christians were persecuted across the Middle East. Interestingly, in the ancient church mass is celebrated in a similar fashion to Islamic traditions.

Almost entirely self-sufficient, the monastery’s community numbers around 15 permanent staff but can rise into the thirties and forties to cater for the hundreds of pilgrims and day-trippers arriving during summer from Damascus and the central Syrian valleys. The monastery employs a solar-powered water heating system and boasts wireless internet in its three-room library.

 

Coexistence:

“But I believe in the good nature of peoples humanity, and this is enough for me,”[10] he added.

“To be able to respect others, you have to recognize them as subjects worthy of being respected,”[11]

In Deir Mar Musa monastery, Father Dall’Ogliohas been trying to rediscover and re-express, with more awareness and free choice, the ancient structure of inter-relationship between this Christian institution and the Islamic community.[12]

Muslims and Christians, Syrians and foreigners, find in Deir Mar Musa a symbol of hope for a common future, to be built with a shared responsibility.[13]

Eastern Churches are more deeply part of Arabic/Islamic civilization

Our experience in Deir Mar Musa is deeply the one of a common worship and a common relationship with the One God, the Merciful Creator, the One who sides with the poor, oppressed, and abandoned those little ones who are thirsty and hungry for justice.

It is a place where monks and nuns live together and where Muslim visitors sometimes even pray with Christians.

“Many Syrian visitors come on the weekends – for them the monastery is a place to go on a normal outing,” says the monk. All visitors are welcome. After the strenuous climb they can rest in a Bedouin tent, drink a glass of water or share a simple meal with the monks.

 

Our shared spirituality is based on the simplicity of our life, on peace and the recognition of Islam and Christianity as religions of God.” The different religions are part of the “mystery that is humanity

 

The monks maintain contact with Islamic scholars, priests and intellectuals and hold joint seminars on religious, social and political issues

 

Sign of integration

The language of liturgy is Arabic: The monastery follows Syrian rites, and the language of the liturgy is Arabic, although the nuns and monks come from Italy, Switzerland, France and Syria. They invite Syrian Christians to the monastery on a regular basis.

 

Mar Musa is also committed to local social projects. For example, the monastery helped renovate old houses to provide homes for young families, or to enable émigrés to return.

 

Upcoming projects focus on ecology, with the goal of preserving creation for the good of humanity. For example, an ecologically-friendly goat farm in the desert is meant to provide young families with a source of income.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Conclusion:

Today, the monastery stands as an important local and national vehicle for interfaith initiatives

With such an eclectic concoction of backpackers, worshippers and teenagers on its busiest days,

 

“Muslims in the Levant consider Deir Mar Musa as a place of their own,”[14] said Father Paolo.

 

In Syria Muslims and Christians have been living together peacefully for centuries. And the inhabitants of Mar Musa hope to continue strengthening and deepening this dialogue.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The monstary they renovated and how they want to make an interfaith place

1. Is there any impact or vestiges of what has happened in Syria?
2. Do people know about it? Is it an experiment that people have talked about? Can you find anything in the press about it? Or is it just non-existent now?
3. French/ language/
4. Alina Dini :
5. Use English/ French / Arabic

 

 

[1]Christina Förch, Muslims and Christians Sharing Spirituality, Translated from the German by Isabel Cole, © Qantara.de 2004. Accessed September 7, 2020. https://en.qantara.de/content/mar-musa-monastery-syria-muslims-and-christians-sharing-spirituality.

[2]Christina Förch, Muslims and Christians Sharing Spirituality, Translated from the German by Isabel Cole, © Qantara.de 2004. Accessed September 7, 2020. https://en.qantara.de/content/mar-musa-monastery-syria-muslims-and-christians-sharing-spirituality.

[3]Christina Förch, Muslims and Christians Sharing Spirituality, Translated from the German by Isabel Cole, © Qantara.de 2004. Accessed September 7, 2020. https://en.qantara.de/content/mar-musa-monastery-syria-muslims-and-christians-sharing-spirituality

[4]Christina Förch, Muslims and Christians Sharing Spirituality, Translated from the German by Isabel Cole, © Qantara.de 2004. Accessed September 7, 2020. https://en.qantara.de/content/mar-musa-monastery-syria-muslims-and-christians-sharing-spirituality

[5]Stephen Starr, The Monastery “Deir Mar Musa” in Syria: A Haven for Spirituality and Dialogue, © Qantara.de 2009. Accessed September 7, 2020.

https://en.qantara.de/content/the-monastery-deir-mar-musa-in-syria-a-haven-for-spirituality-and-dialogue

 

[6]Christina Förch, Muslims and Christians Sharing Spirituality, Translated from the German by Isabel Cole, © Qantara.de 2004. Accessed September 7, 2020. https://en.qantara.de/content/mar-musa-monastery-syria-muslims-and-christians-sharing-spirituality.

[7]https://en.qantara.de/content/the-monastery-deir-mar-musa-in-syria-a-haven-for-spirituality-and-dialogue

[8]The Anna Lindh Foundation is an Institute of the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership that works to promote Mutual respect among people of different religion or any other belief. See https://www.annalindhfoundation.org/Accessed September 7, 2020.

 

 

 

[9]https://en.qantara.de/content/the-monastery-deir-mar-musa-in-syria-a-haven-for-spirituality-and-dialogue

 

[10]https://en.qantara.de/content/the-monastery-deir-mar-musa-in-syria-a-haven-for-spirituality-and-dialogue

 

[11]Interview with Father Paolo Dall’Oglio. Interview: Traugott Schoefthaler. © Anna Lindh Foundation / Qantara.de 2006

https://en.qantara.de/content/interview-with-father-paolo-dalloglio-we-know-we-have-brothers-and-sisters-in-the-islamic-0

 

[12]Interview with Father Paolo Dall’Oglio.

[13]Interview with Father Paolo Dall’Oglio.

 

[14]https://en.qantara.de/content/the-monastery-deir-mar-musa-in-syria-a-haven-for-spirituality-and-dialogue