VATICAN CITY - TWO years after Pope Benedict XVI sparked controversy during a speech on Islam in Bavaria, the Vatican prepares to host the first Catholic-Muslim forum to improve dialogue between the two religions.

Around 50 Catholic and Muslim figures will participate in a private three-day seminar entitled Love of God, Love of Neighbour, that includes women from both faiths according to the Catholic News Service (CNS). 

In March, the CNS reported "Representatives of the Vatican and of the 138 Muslim scholars who wrote to Pope Benedict XVI last October proposing a new dialogue have established the Catholic-Muslim Forum.

The forum will sponsor a seminar in Rome Nov. 4-6 with 24 scholars from each side, according to a statement released at the end of a March 4-5 planning meeting at the Vatican.

Pope Benedict will meet with the seminar participants in November, the statement said."

The forum's schedule has not been made public, but the participants will examine the positions of the Roman Catholic Church and Islam on spiritual love and charity and issues of 'human dignity' and 'mutual respect', CNS reported. "The Nov. 4 session will focus on the theological and spiritual foundations of Christian and Muslim teachings about the obligation to love God and one's neighbor. The second day will focus on "human dignity and mutual respect" and the third day will be a conference open to the public, the statement said."

Says one of the Muslim Scholars, Aref Ali Nayed, director of the Royal Islamic Strategic Studies Center in Jordan:  "...addressing social-political issues should be rooted in the revelation of God and in the theological teachings of our two communities," because believers judge situations based on their faith, he said."  Nayed also noted "This whole initiative is about healing; it is about healing the wounds of a very pained and, in many ways, destroyed world."

"We also take this opportunity to remind our fellow Muslims that it is against the Prophet's (Mohammed) teaching to even touch religious leaders and monks and priests," Nayed said. "Religious leaders and religious symbols must be respected."

Nayed also said he understood that Pope Benedict was concerned about restrictions on religious freedom faced by Christians in some majority Muslim countries, but he hoped the Catholic-Muslim Forum would be a place where leaders from both sides could strengthen their commitment to religious freedom for all people without having the meeting turn into an exchange of "a list of grievances."

Mainly, he said, the Muslim scholars want to promote hope by promoting dialogue with others and unity among mainstream Muslims not represented by the "loud, violent, cruel" minority sometimes painted as representing all of Islam.

The scholars want their leaders to meet the pope and other Christian leaders because "the sight of these leaders with our leaders, standing together in love of God, love of neighbor," would be a sign of hope "that the religious communities can be a help to getting humanity out of the cruelty cycle it is in, rather than being a cause of the cruelty cycle," he said.

The pope is expected to give a speech before the seminar ends on Thursday, during which he may attempt to draw a line under controversial remarks he made in 2006. The pope caused a stir when he quoted a Byzantine emperor who equated Islam with violence in a speech at Regensburg University. In using the quotation, the pope was perceived in Islamic circles as seeking to establish a link between Islam and violence and to cast doubt on relations between the Islamic faith and reason. Pope Benedict XVI later apologised by claiming that he had been misunderstood.

The Vatican also published figures that said that Muslims outnumbered Catholics worldwide.  Basing its report on 2006 figures, it said Muslims represent more than 19 per cent of the world's 6.5 billion population while Catholics represent 17.4 per cent.

In a written statement to the press, Abdal Hakim Murad Winter, director of Britain's Muslim Academic Trust, said those who believe in God have a responsibility and an opportunity to reach out to each other, to work together and to promote religious values in the world.

"The reality of engagement between believers of different traditions is overwhelmingly one of conviviality; but extremists on all sides veil this by using language of exclusion and contempt," he said.

Recent research suggests that the main problem people have with religion today is not their doubt about the existence of God, "but rather the widespread sense that religion brings discord rather than healing to the world," Winter wrote.