by Isabel Smyth

International Human Fraternity Day was held on 4 February. It comes during UN Interfaith Harmony Week and celebrates the signing of the Document on Human Fraternity for World Peace and Living Together by Pope Francis and the Grand Imam from Al-Azhar University, Ahmed el-Tayeb on 4 February 2019.

The document has caught the imagination of many people and has led to the setting up of the Higher Committee on Human Fraternity, composed of Christians, Muslims and Jews and was instituted to promote human fraternity values in communities around the world.

Since the signing of the document in 2019 the Scottish Catholic Bishops’ Committee for Interreligious Dialogue and the Ahl-al Bait Scotland Society have worked together to understand and reflect on its implications for good interfaith relations.

In the first year we read it together and discussed its relevance. In 2021 we had a conference at which Sheikh Shomali and Cardinal Michael Fitzgerald responded to the document. Last year we focussed on the question of women as one of the issues worth pursuing. This year we thought we would try something a bit different. We decided that a workshop that would engage participants in considering how the document related to interfaith relations would be worth a try.

So, we invited three members of the planning group to say three things that stood out for them in the document. This was then followed by three open questions when they were asked to complete the following statements:

Isabel Smyth SND was for many years the secretary of the Scottish Catholic Bishops’ Committee for Interreligious Dialogue.