Muslims and Christians do not fully understand each other says Rowan Williams

Ruth Gledhill, Religion Correspondent
October 13, 2008

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, admitted yesterday that the Christian and Muslim faiths are so fundamentally different that both sides are still unable to understand each other properly.

Dr Williams, speaking at an interfaith conference in Cambridge, said that it was possible for Islam and Christianity, two of the three Abrahamic faiths, to agree around the imperatives to love God and "love your neighbour". Muslims and Christians agree about the need to alleviate both poverty and suffering, he said.

But at a theological level there was still massive disagreement. Dr Williams contrasted the "self-emptying" aspect of Christianity, a faith built on the failure and weakness of its founder through his death on the cross, to the Islamic narrative of "trial and triumph". the rest