ISLAM-CHRISTIAN DIALOGUE

19 community, as there is a European com- munity, but not a European nation. The- se confusions are the source of wars in the Middle East, because if we talk about an Islamic nation, we mix a political con- cept with a religious one. I think that in this case it is important to introduce the concept of ambition. The term was coi- ned around 1880, by Yazgi, a Lebanese Christian poet, with the phrase "wake up, or Arabs". The phrase, as a tactical stra- tegy, called all Arab countries to unite against the Ottoman Empire. The union could not take place through Islam, be- cause not all were Muslims; to do it at the nation level meant to divide all the coun- tries. The coveted objective was what will unite all countries and people both Chri- stian and Muslim. I must recognize that today Arab Christians often refuse to call themselves Arabs. The refusal is caused by a strong tendency of these last twenty years to identify all Arabs with Islam. For example, Gaddafi, the president of Libya, has difficulty conceiving that there are non-Muslim Arabs. Many Christians have thought that if Arabic means Muslim, con- sequently, not being Muslims, then they are not even Arabs. Arab Christians live in an Arab world that is 90% Muslim, so culturally they are Muslims, like a French or Italian atheist is culturally Christian. It is not possible to think of Italian or Fren- ch culture apart from Christianity, just as it is not possible to think of Arab culture without Islam. Flash on Islam Islam is a religion founded by the prophet Mohamed (or Mohammed) in the 7th cen- tury AD The Islamic law or sharia draws its sources from the Koran, the book reve- aled by Muhammad, and from the hadith, which narrates his life. The predominant teaching and application of sharia refer to the following concepts: - Islam is both state and religion, contains an immutable social project; the Koran has laid the foundation for civil society for all men in all times and places; - all Muslims are part of the same nation: Umma. Despite the frontiers, the con- cept of nation predates the mine in Mu- slim philosophy; - outside of Islam there is no salvation; the whole universe must become Muslim, even if not all the faithful are unanimous on the means to be used to reach the end; - juridical superiority of the Muslim and tolerance towards the other monothei- stic religions, the people of the book, that is Jews and Christians. From this we can clearly understand how the religious factor cannot be neglected, if we want to seriously face any problem of the Middle East. If we go to investigate the causes of all the disagreements that exist in this region, we discover that in one way or another these relate to religious impli- cations. Sharia is the law; his sources are: the Koran, the revealed book: ì hadith. the narrated life of Mohamed: igtihad. or the effort, which consists in the emission of a rule proclaimed by the doctors of the law based on reasoning by analogy on a new fact compared to a previous one, already the object of the existing rule. Doctors of the law stopped promulgating rules after the 9th century following abuse. In the Muslim religious legal system, Jews and Christians have the right to live in free- dom and, in some cases, to practice their religious; however, they cannot have po- sitions that are socially or politically rele- vant. For example, a marriage between a Muslim man and a Christian woman is ac- cepted, because being Muslim is legally privileged ,therefore, the children will au- tomatically be Muslim like the father, and eventually the mother will also be pressu- rized to convert. On the other hand, a re- lationship between a Christian man and a