Dr. Hardy Ostry (*)

At Konrad Adenauer Stiftung, we attribute high importance to the issues presented in this publication. I would like to thank very much the Al Quds Center for Political Studies for taking this modern, but also courageous and necessary step towards the dialogue of high-ranking political and scientific representatives of Islam. As one of the largest German political foundations, committed to the heritage of the first Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany, Konrad Adenauer, we are pleased to participate in this dialogue. As a political foundation close to the German party Christian Democratic Union, we are highly committed to this dialogue because this party has developed its most important principles for political and social actions against the background of the confessional experiences of the last decades and its deep effects on the development of the German democracy.
Freedom, personality, subsidiarity, justice and common welfare are essential and decisive principles of our philosophy, which is based on the dialectics of the secularisation and the social-confessional movements leading finally to a consensus of our state legitimacy.

The one or the other of you may rightly ask, what interests drive a German political foundation to support and to cooperate actively in the realm of this dialogue? There are certainly many answers to this question, but let me specify at least a few reasons. For us as a political foundation this dialogue only makes sense, if it is orientated towards defined goals and if it does not attempt to serve its own purposes. We follow the objective to support efforts to approach understanding between the Muslim and the Christian World, this relationship is vital if we are to succeed in living together in peace and in a constructive manner as well as a guarantee for stability and development in each country. 

At the same time, to make it clear, we aim to approach one another in the field of social and political values and views. We have all observed closely the controversies during the last months, for example, the debate on the caricatures or the reactions to the election results in Palestine. Quite often I received the impression that these reactions were like reflexes, even sometimes like automatic responses. Ex post, I realized that these controversies have released an intense discussion in some countries, in regions fuch as Asia and Europe, revealing the need for a substantial discussion. Thus, we are supporting these efforts to strengthen the dialogue which results from both sides and which is necessary to establish a fruitful and constructive bilateral dialogue. 

Efforts to strengthen the dialogue resulting from within Islam or within Christianity as well as on a bilateral level seem always to be threatened by being too general, or without real commitment in order to guarantee a loose consensus. Thus, it seems to be obvious to me, that it is essential to face concrete inquiries and challenges. Over the program of the coming three days, this is exactly the approach and perspective chosen by the Al Quds Center for Political Studies. Diverse experiences resulting from different contexts lead to concrete inquiries, like the relationship between religion and the state, minorities in the Islamic world, individual freedom or community. There, we can find the origins of added values, and the chance to approach each other and create a better understanding as well as to sometimes formulate common positions and perspectives.

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* Regional Representative, Konrad Adenauer Stiftung, Jordan.