Skudlarek report South Africa

Arrival, Johannesburg airport

Monastic-Muslim Dialogue in South Africa

The eleventh round of dialogue between Catholic monastics and Shi‘a Muslims took place at Inkamana Abbey in South Africa, December 2-5, 2024. It was the third meeting to be held in Africa and came just days after Father Boniface Kamushishi was elected to serve as Inkamana’s fourth abbot. As is the custom whenever these meetings take place in a monastic setting, the daily schedule includes the times for communal prayer of the monastic community and the times designated for Muslim prayer (salah). The participants are welcome to attend both.

The abbey and its school are located approximately five kilometers from the city of Vryheid in KwaZulu-Natal, about six hours by car from Johannesburg. Established as a mission station by the Benedictine Congregation of Saint Ottlien on August 3, 1922, it has since developed into a significant monastic and educational center within the region.

The theme of this most recent Monastic-Muslim dialogue was “Christian and Muslim beliefs and spiritual practices related to death and the afterlife.” One of the reasons for choosing this theme was to honor the memory of several key figures in this dialogue who had died in recent years. Dom Timothy Wright, former Abbot of Ampleforth Abbey in England and, with Dr. Mohammad Ali Shomali, the founder of this ongoing dialogue between monks and Muslims, died in May 2018. Sister Lucy Brydon, long-time coordinator of the Great Britain-Ireland Commission of Monastic Interreligious Dialogue, died in August 2020. Abbot Godefroy Ragunet de Saint-Albin of the Trappist monastery of Acey in France, accidentally fell to his death last August while hiking in the Swiss Alps. Abbot Notker Wolf, who, as Abbot Primate of the Benedictine Confederation, was an especially strong supporter of this dialogue, died in April of this year.

The Muslim participants in this year’s meeting were

Dr. Mohammad Ali Shomali, Director of the Risalat International Institute, UK;
Ms. Israa Safieddine, interfaith coordinator for the Risalat International Institute, Detroit, Michigan;
Ms. Shahnaze Safieddine, teacher, Detroit, Michigan;
Mrs.

Participants

Aarifa Suleman, Tanzania;
Dr. Mohsen Javadi, senior professor of philosophy of ethics at the University of Qom, prepared a paper but was not able to present it in person;
Sayyid Mohammad Reza Moradi Mohaddes, Vice Director and Deputy of Research at the International Institute for Islamic Studies, Qom, Iran, who participated via Zoom;
Shaykh Mahdi Rastifar, Vice-Director of the Risalat International Institute, Qom, Iran;
Mr. Bashier Rahim, Cape Town, South Africa, who represented Ahlul Bait Foundation of South Africa, which aims to propagate Islamic teachings and serve the Shi‘a community in South Africa
Dr. Mostafa El-Diwany, medical doctor, Quebec.

The Christian participants were

Abbot Olivier-Marie Sarr OSB, a liturgical theologian from Keur Moussa Abbey in Senegal;
Fr. Benoît Standaert OSB, Belgian monk and exegete presently serving in Trinidad who participated via Zoom;
Fr. William Skudlarek OSB, a monk of Saint John’s Abbey in Collegeville, Minnesota, former Secretary General of DIM•MID;
Fr. Victor Chavunga OSB, a monk of Inkamana Abbey and pastor of a local parish;
Dr. Corinna Mühlstedt, Lutheran theologian specializing in ecumenism and interreligious dialog and Rome-based journalist for German Radio ARD, Germany/Italy;
Sr. Lusina Cheptoo OSB, Missionary Benedictine Sister, Nairobi, Kenya;
Mr. Fredrick Musindai, Islamic scholar, Kenya

The presentations and ensuing discussions covered a wide variety of topics, including our respective teachings on death, judgment, heaven, and hell, the challenge of expressing these teachings in today’s world, care for the dying, and what we might learn from near-death experiences.

Some recurring

Presentation by Israa Safieddine

questions that we addressed in our discussions were

If God is All-Merciful, how is it possible to affirm that there will be eternal condemnation and punishment for sinners who die unrepentant?
What is an appropriate way to speak of the resurrection of the body, and what terminology would be appropriate for presenting this belief in a world where many deny any kind of existence after death?
It is obvious that faith in an afterlife is decreasing. Could one of the reasons for this decline be the sentimentalized and materialistic ways in which believers have spoken about heaven and hell?
How might we respond to the growing trend toward “designer funerals” in which religious symbols and prayer give way to telling stories about the personality and achievements of the one who has died?[1]

This issue of Dilatato Corde includes most of the presentations made over the three days of dialogue. Links to them are at the end of this report.

On December 6, the group made the six-hour trip to Pretoria, where it was invited to have lunch with the Iranian Ambassador to South Africa, H.E. Mansour Shakib Mehr. The lunch was held in the garden of the Cultural Center of the Iranian Embassy. It was hosted by the Cultural Counsellor of the Iranian Embassy, Mr. Seyed Mostafa Daryabari, a former student of Dr Shomali.

That evening the group was invited to the Babul Ilm Islamic Centre for Africa in Johannesburg, about 45 minutes from Pretoria, for the Friday service commemorating Lady Fatimah Zahra, Muhammad's daughter, and Husayn ibn Ali (626-680 CE, the third Imam in Shi‘a Islam).

On Saturday morning, December 7, a public event on “Unity of God; Unity in God” was held at the Saint John Vianney Seminary in Pretoria. The program was organized by Sayyid Aftab Haider, a prominent Islamic scholar and speaker from Cape Town, and Fr. Bonaventure Mashata, M. Afr., Secretary of the Department of Ecumenism, Interreligious Dialogue, and Dialogue with the Secular World of the South African Catholic Bishops Conference. Honored guests at the event were Archbishop Henryk Jagodziński, Apostolic Nuncio of South Africa, Eswatini, Lesotho, Namibia, and Botswana, and Bishop Jan de Groef, M.

Lunch at the Iranian Cultural Center, Pretoria

Afr., Chairperson of the Department of Ecumenism, Interreligious Dialogue, and Dialogue with the Secular World of the South African Catholic Bishops Conference, Archbishop Jagodziński’s comments following the event can be view here.

Among the presentations made at the conference in Inkamana, the following were submitted for posting in Dilatato Corde:

Fr. Benoît Standaert, O.S.B., Some Biblical Thoughts on Death and Life after Death (Full text)

Fr. William Skudlarek, O.S.B., Ars Moriendi: A sixteenth-century Handbook on the Art of Dying (PowerPoint and additional Commentary)

Shaykh Mahdi Rastifar, Raj‘ah – Returning to Life (PowerPoint)

Mr. Fredrick Musindai, The Meaning of Hell in the Light of God’s Mercy: A Christian Reading of the Qur’an (Notes)

Dr. Mohsen Javadi, Resurrection

Dr. Shomali with Bishop Jan de Groef and Nuncio Archbishop Henryk Jagodzinski

in Islamic Theology (Notes)

Dr. Corinna Muelhstedt, Death and Resurrection as a Process – Intercultural Experiences (Notes)

Sayyid Mohammad Reza Moradi Mohaddes, Out of the Body Experiences Based on Islamic Teaching (Full text)

Abbot Olivier-Marie Sarr, O.S.B., The Monastic and Liturgical Context of Psalm 130 (De Profundis/Out of the Depths) at Keur Moussa Abbey in Senegal (Forthcoming)

Ms. Israa Safieddine, God’s Display of Justice & Mercy on Judgment Day (PowerPoint)

Dr. Mohammad Ali Shomali, Characteristics and Signs of the People of Heaven (Full text)

Note

[1] One recent example: a front-page story in the December 26, 2024 issue of The Minnesota Star Tribune was about family members honoring their loved ones by having the recipes of their signature dishes engraved on their tombstones.

William Skudlarek is a monk of Saint John's Abbey in Collegeville, Minnesota. He was Secretary General of DIM•MID from 2007 to 2024 and now serves as Executive Secretary of the North American Commission for Monastic Interreligious Dialogue.