Fadi Daou, Fabio Petito and Michael D. Driessen, Human Fraternity and Inclusive Citizenship: Interreligious Engagement in the Mediterranean, Milan: Ledizioni, June 2021, 194 pages.
Polarization and discrimination linked to religion have been increasing in many parts of the world, including on the two shores of the Mediterranean. Against this background, however, seeds of hope have emerged from a number of religious leaders who have called for a new narrative of human fraternity and inclusive citizenship.
This report analyzes the opportunities which human fraternity and inclusive citizenship offer for government-religious partnerships aimed at building more inclusive and peaceful societies across both shores of the Mediterranean and puts forward interreligious engagement as a new policy framework that recognizes and amplifies these novel dynamics.
Can the interreligious narrative of human fraternity help to create new inclusive forms of citizenship? How can governments and international organizations better partner with religious leaders and communities to concretely build inclusive societies from the MENA region to Europe?
Father Fadi Daou is Lebanese and lives in Beirut.
Fadi Daou is cofounder and former CEO of the Adyan foundation, and professor of theology and geopolitics of religion. He holds a PhD in theology and a post-PhD in political philosophy (University of Strasbourg, France).
After being director of the Higher Institute for Religious Sciences (USJ, Beirut), and professor at the Holy Spirit University (Kaslik), he is now scientific collaborator at the University of Geneva and visiting professor in several universities.
He has authored several books and studies, the latest one as co-editor Human Fraternity and Inclusive Citizenship (ISPI, 2021); he also co-authored with Nayla Tabbara, L’hospitalité divine : l’autre dans le dialogue des théologies chrétienne et musulmane (Berlin, 2013) published in Arabic الرحابة الإلهيّة (Beyrouth, 2011), as well as in English Divine Hospitality: A Christian-Muslim Conversation (WCC, 2017) and German (LIT, 2017). An Italian translation in process. In 2012, he directed the publication of an Arabic volume devoted to education for coexistence: التربيّة على العيش المشترك في ظلّ المواطنة الحاضنة للتنوّع الدينيّ, al-Maktaba al-Būlisiyya, Beirut.
Under the Adyan foundation and in partnership with the Ministry of Education and CRDP, he is director of the National Reformation Project of Education for Citizenship and Coexistence.
He received the “Civilization of Love Prize” and many other prizes through the Adyan foundation, including “The Civilian Peace in Lebanon Prize” and the Second World Prize of the United Nations Education for Peace in a Pluralistic World.
He also received the 2020 Elevate Prize for Global Change-makers (MIT — USA).
Fadi Daou and Nayla Tabbara, Divine Hospitality: A Christian-Muslim Conversation, Amsterdam, World Council of Churches, July 2017, 180 pages.
In face of unprecedented awareness of religious diversity, as well as the dangers of conflict, interreligious dialogue has become vital. Yet, these authors maintain, it is the commitment to think together about religious faith and our inherited traditions that genuinely moves mutual understanding to new levels. Here is such a religious experiment, an interreligious theological quest, framed in the interests of peacemaking. Fadi Daou and Nayla Tabbara, a Maronite priest and a Muslim Sunni, respectively, share one objective: to show what the Christian and Muslim faiths teach with regard to religious “otherness” and to indicate the relationship which may link the believer of another religion to God. It is this honest attempt to find divine hospitality that opens each religion to spiritual solidarity and to the reality, presence, and gift of the other.
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Fadi Daou, « The Arab uprisings and the new challenges for national social cohesion and Arab-West relations », in: Nayla Tabbara (éd.), What about the other? : a question for cross-cultural education in the 21st century,Notre Dame University – Louaize, 2012, p. 19-31.
