[Previous entry: "Let's get real"] [Next entry: "It's the end of the church as we know it"]

04/19/2004: "Sauce for the goose... "

Muslims in Cordoba, Spain, want permission to conduct Islamic prayers in the city's Roman Catholic cathedral. According to London's Guardian:

Muslims across Spain are lobbying the Roman Catholic church in the southern city of Córdoba to make a symbolic gesture of reconciliation between faiths by allowing them to pray in the city's cathedral.

Córdoba's renaissance cathedral sits in the centre of an ancient mosque complex, and local Muslims want to be allowed to pray there again. They have appealed to the Vatican to intercede on their behalf.

Zakarias Maza, the director of the Taqwa mosque in neighbouring Granada, said yesterday: "We hope the Vatican will give a signal that it has a vision of openness and dialogue.

"It would be good if there were a gesture of tolerance on their part.

"Córdoba has been a symbol of the union of three cultures for centuries. Even now, Jews and Muslims live together with Christians in the neighbourhood around the mosque."

But he added: "The church council doesn't seem to be open to dialogue."

The local Catholic authorities, and the Vatican should approve this request–just as soon as Christians are allowed to celebrate Mass in the mosques of Alexandria, Damascus, and Istanbul, three of the centers of early Christianity.