Rabbi Israel Singer, Chairman of the Governing Board of the World Jewish Congress (WJC), has said that a critical moment had come now engaging in dialogue with the Islamic world, based on the success of talks with the Catholic Church.
Singer said that the 40 years of dialogue between Catholics and Jews following the Vatican declaration "Nostra Aetate" in 1965 could serve as a role model for a rapprochement with the Islamic world.
Singer pointed out that those for whom the "clash of civilizations" was "a self-fulfilling prophecy", like Iran's president Ahmadinejad, must be stopped by an alliance of moderate leaders from different faiths, working for mutual respect and understanding between cultures and religions.
Singer spoke in Bilbao, Spain, where he gave a keynote speech to the Congress on Inter-Religious and Inter-Cultural Dialogue organized by the Catholic organization Pax Romana and UNESCO and co-hosted by the WJC. The high-level event in Bilbao was attended by leading representatives of various Christian denomination as well as Buddhist, Muslim and Jewish leaders and scholars.
The WJC Chairman said that his trip to Bilbao was also a "personal reunion". He told the story of his grandfather who was saved from deportation to the Nazi death camps because he was helped by courageous Basque citizens when crossing the border from France to Spain during World War II.
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