Earlier this year, I was invited to sit in on a theological gathering at Cambridge University.  Over three intense days, I watched scholars from as far afield as Asia, North America, the Middle East and Russia pour over passages of scripture in small mixed faith groups.  Although the academic surroundings were familiar to me, I was to be exposed to a form of shared study that I had never witnessed before.

On Wednesday 8 September, with the ninth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks still three days away, Kabul police went on high alert for violent protests in the Afghan capital. The move was triggered not by the repercussions of a local conflict, but the actions of a little-known American church pastor thousands of miles away in Florida who was planning to burn copies of the Qur’an in a protest against what he called ‘radical Islam’.
The crisis, which elicited stark warnings from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the top U.S. …

International society urgently needs more face-to-face communication across cultural barriers to stave off the threat of increased communal tension and extremism, UN chief Ban Ki-moon told civil society leaders in Istanbul on Monday.

Radicalization of the poor in the midst of global economic crisis could only be tackled through cooperation and dialogue, the UN Secretary General said in an address at the Alliance of Civilizations Forum.

Ki-moon also urged assembled world leaders, including the Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, to share ‘the spirit of goodwill’ in the worst global economic downturn since the 1930s.

Initiatives for peace within and between societies could also enable economic growth by encouraging stability and investment, he said.