Religious dialog looks more and more to be a necessary step to promote peace and freedom in the world. The revival of religion around the world puts this subject as a really important issue. Religions, and the way sacred texts are interpreted, are often linked to ideologies, and it looks necessary to defend a tolerant vision of religion in our time. This step looks necessary to build a more inclusive society.
First it looks necessary to promote a better reading society. To this extend it looks that religions encompass ideologies as well as politics. Interpretation of texts open many traditions. For instance the Catholics showed rivalries between Joseph Ratzinger and Hans Kung. They have always been important between religious trends. It opposed for instance Averroes and Al Afghani in Islam. All these thinkers were above all great readers and promoted a society based on knowledge. For instance the great theologian Thomas de Aquinas told that “it is more important to enlight than to be brilliant”. This approach shows that teaching, the promotion of knowledge to all its extend can give a lot positive impact in society. Islamism of the Muslim Brothers succeeded to exploit a real mediocrous knowledge to implement its ideas.
Second it may be efficient to create networks between moderate religious people. Creating a network that could encompass different religions but different nationalities as well. To this extend it is necessary to build a network encompassing different religious people. Clerks, believers from different religions can build a system than defends and promotes more tolerant values. It looks necessary to promote this approach to create a better system this way. It looks detrimental to create dialog between moderates, and as well to create refuge for oppressed opponents of religious extremists. Building such networks look necessary to confront the rise of religious oppression.
Last building this dialog must be a long term project. This strategy must encompass a lot of activities. To this extend it looks detrimental to advocate a better long term process. A lot of work has to be done to give satisfying response to all the issues underneath religious radicalism. However it looks necessary to build a long term strategy which will encompass political activism around these subject, the promotion of actors such as the social and solidarity economy. Investing in education is also necessary long term project to fight problems linked to this issue. Ignorance has often been a great way to extremists and oppressors of all kind to grow : the fight is also in this field and will be more and more detrimental in the long run.
The observer 