by Luca Doninelli

The Arabic translation of Fr. Luigi Giussani’s book, The Religious Sense, is not a translation like the others. All translations are equally important, but the cultural import of an event like this is truly beyond measure. In presenting the meeting, entitled, “Broadening Reason,” last October 26th at Milan Catholic University, which promoted the event with the Milan Cultural Center, Fr. Ambrogio Pisoni rightly pointed out that such a fact belongs, in its exceptionality, to the normality of Christian life; that is to say, it is a missionary concern that is part of everyday Christian awareness.
The meeting pivoted around this basic accent, since it links the Christian genius with the simplicity of Christian life, with contributions by Wa’il Farouq, a Muslim, lecturer in Islamic Science at the Coptic-Catholic University of Sakakini, in Cairo, and Fr. Julián Carrón, lecturer in Theology at Milan Catholic University.

Three levels of reading
Farouq’s marvelous contribution, intelligent and lucid, was first and foremost the witness of a Muslim profoundly struck by the words of The Religious Sense. Amongst the various levels of reading of the text, Farouq focused on the personal level–if inter-religious dialogue is not progressing it is because the central element of that dialogue, the “I,” is often missing.
St. Thomas Aquinas already said this, and he had had a number of contacts with Muslims, and not only by reading books–if the relationship with the other cannot be based on common faith, there is still reason, which is the common heritage of all men.
In other words, doctrine is of no use if there is not an “I” and a “you” involved. Concepts like “inter-religious dialogue” (but even in non-religious terms, concepts like “multi-culturalism”) make sense only in the context of a concrete interpersonal relationship.
It was the friendship between an Italian Catholic student, Paolo, and the lecturer Farouq, born of the simple need to learn the Arabic language, that gave rise to the latter’s interest in the words of a Milanese priest–words that opened and radically changed his conception of religiosity and human reason, and helped him not to reject but to deepen the meaning of his belonging to Islam.
Little by little, the words of The Religious Sense threw light on the words the Arabic language uses to describe the concept of “reason” in a people, the Arab people, whose very name evokes the idea of movement, of wandering, of a life without ties and of the need for these.

Reality and elementary needs
Fr. Julián Carrón’s contribution centered on the idea of reason as the inevitable (and, sadly, often avoided) relationship between reality, concrete facts, and the elementary needs that constitute the human “heart.” He began with a long quotation from Alain Finkielkraut’s book, We, Modern Men, in which the French philosopher speaks of the last years of the life of his mentor, Roland Barthes.
Barthes is the guru of French culture: he was “always the first, always in the forefront,” who granted or took away people’s credentials as “modern.” Then, something happened that he had long feared: his mother died. “All of a sudden, not being modern left me indifferent,” he wrote in his diary on August 13, 1977, as he was caring for his mother.
A few days later the blow fell, according to another note from his diary: “I wake up in the morning and see the agenda for the week. I have no hope. The same things, the same engagements, the same appointments, despite my lack of commitment, even though some parts of the agenda are bearable, if not pleasant.” There! Reason begins to free itself from the prison of modernity–reason no longer understood as a game of the intelligence but acknowledgment of a fact. In this acknowledgment, the true factors of human experience come into play, the “heart” comes into play. Reason no longer takes one piece of reality as a pretext for bridling it into its own pre-packaged interpretative keys, but opens up to reality, for reason is the expression of our dependence on a Mystery that makes us.

Painful backwardness
This is the meaning of the last part of Benedict XVI’s lecture at Regensburg, which the two speakers stated to be central for the Church’s journey and for the relationships between Christianity and Islam. Regarding the quotation from Manuel II Paleologus, which aroused so much anger and violence in the Islamic world, Farouq was clear: the violence does not come from Islam but from a condition of painful backwardness.
We don’t want to go into this point, but one thing is clear: Farouq’s contribution was one of the first and, undoubtedly, the most intelligent and profound attempt to respond to the provocation the Pope offered Muslim friends with his lecture. Some people reacted and a discussion began. Moreover, Farouq described very precisely his own feeling, one of drama and of happiness. In affirming the diversity of his own human, religious and cultural history, he also said, “Here, though, I feel at home.”
The phrase of Novalis, very dear to Fr. Giussani, comes to mind: “Strictly speaking, philosophy [i.e., reason] is nostalgia, the desire to feel at home everywhere.”
But all this began, as always, with something wholly human–the friendship between two people who want to live their humanity intensely. From this the most unimaginable things can arise. We are only at the beginning.