Christian-Muslim Dialogue in Kaslik

Some students of NEST attended a Christian Muslim Dialogue in Kaslik, Lebanon. Here is the first report by Florian Jäckl:

On Saturday 17th of April, I attended a meeting of the various Theological faculties and institutes of Lebanon, Christian as well as Muslims. The Theological faculty of the Maronite university of Kaslik had invited to this event and four students from NEST and one teacher participated.
The meeting was entirely in Arabic (which is why I did not understand everything precisely and thus might got something wrong…) and started – after the usual greetings – with two lectures about “meeting the other” by a Christian and a Muslim professor respectively. While the Muslim stressed a culture of respect, the Christian opted for a Secular approach. After a break we went into group discussion and ended the conference with a presentation of the discussion results.
I personally missed an introduction of the faculties and responsible people involved. Also, the conference was much to short to really engage in getting to know each other. The issues discussed were hardly on a sophisticated level expected from theologically well versed people. And after all, no commitments or plans were adopted.
This is a lot of critique for an undoubtedly important event, especially from a somewhat outsider. That is why I would like to close with saying how despite all the weaknesses the meeting was amazing with the history of intra- and inter-confessional clashes in Lebanon in mind.