FRED DE SAM LAZARO, correspondent: South Africa has spent six billion dollars just on stadiums—money that could have gone to many pressing needs in a poor country. But that debate has been set aside for the celebrations these days. No one, it seems, has escaped World Cup fever—not even Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who came to our interview wearing soccer vestments.

ARCHBISHOP DESMOND TUTU: Many of those who are celebrating are the very ones that you would have thought wouldn’t because they are poor. But the scriptures long ago reminded us that human beings don’t subsist only on bread. You need things that lift your spirit.

DE SAM LAZARO: For five decades, Tutu has been one of South Africa’s most prominent voices —a leader in the struggle against the white minority rule of apartheid, leader of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission that is widely credited for a mostly peaceful transition after elections in 1994 brought the long-imprisoned Nelson Mandela to power. Now frail, the 92-year-old Mandela makes only rare public appearances. Tutu is also retired, but he keeps a much higher and often outspoken profile.

TUTU: God gave us an incredible start with a Nelson Mandela, and it would be very difficult to maintain that quality of leadership.

DE SAM LAZARO: After 16 years, the verdict on South Africa is decidedly mixed. It still has the modern infrastructure, built for its affluent 10 percent white minority. What’s new are places like this glitzy mall in the historically black township of Soweto. Not long ago, the only blacks in places like these would have been cleaning them. Today, few people can match the consumer appetite of people like Tim Tebeila, part of a new class of black industrialist. He recently came to the site of a multimillion-dollar home he’s building near Johannesburg.

CONTRACTOR (speaking to Tim Tebeila): We’re still waiting for the Italian chandelier to come in that you chose. I think it weighs, what, one-and-a-half tons?

DE SAM LAZARO: Tebeila was a young member of the African National Congress, or ANC, that was banned for fighting apartheid, which officially excluded the 85 percent black majority from all but the most menial jobs. All that changed after ANC leader Nelson Mandela’s election in 1994.

TEBEILA: My business career in 1994 I can say has improved dramatically.

DE SAM LAZARO: Tim Tebeila is a natural salesman who quickly found success in the insurance business. By 1995 came more opportunities.

TEBEILA: I then established a company called Tebeila Building Construction. Now that was also in response to a new trend in government in terms of trying to empower the blacks.

DE SAM LAZARO: Tebeila is one of the most successful beneficiaries of new, sweeping policies to increase black participation in the economy: more ownership of shares in industry, affirmative action in hiring, and more government contracts. The problem, many experts say, is that such success stories are all too few. The new policies have many more people feeling hurt rather than helped. Coenie Kriel has spent four months scouring the Internet for a new job.

COENIE KRIEL: A lot of the adverts are stipulating AA. That stands for affirmative action, meaning that they prefer the AA candidate.

DE SAM LAZARO: The 45-year-old mechanical engineer was laid off from a mining company in February. Four years ago he left a previous job after being passed over for a promotion. In both cases, he says, affirmative-action considerations may have hurt him, even though he’s not entirely opposed to them.

KRIEL: You get in these phases up and down, and you feel why me? But then you realize that’s basically life, and between myself and my wife we believe that it’s the way of the Lord.

DE SAM LAZARO: And overall Kriel has reason to be optimistic and confident. Despite government programs, white South Africans are doing well. White unemployment is just five percent, and given the shortage of engineers, Kriel is confident he’ll soon land a job.

That confidence is hardly shared by blacks. Although living conditions have improved somewhat among black South Africans, black unemployment is officially 25 percent. In reality it’s likely much higher. Unlike their parents, young blacks like Nonthokozo Kubeka can visit shopping malls, but many can do little more than visit.

NONTHOKOZO KUBEKA: I think that the problem in South Africa is that we have the most brilliant policies, but they’re on paper.

DE SAM LAZARO: She got a government loan to attend college—the first in her family ever to do so. But the 24-year-old political science major hasn’t found a job 16 months after graduating.

KUBEKA: The situation is you are more likely to succeed if you know the right people, if you were in the struggle for some reason even. I’m too young to have been in the struggle.

DE SAM LAZARO: South Africans of all races complain about corruption, about high crime rates, about an education system in decline. Amid all this—amid political scandal surrounding the extramarital affairs of current president, Jacob Zuma, the ANC has continued to win elections, still trading, experts say, on its reputation as the party of Mandela. Archbishop Tutu says it will soon have to respond to growing discontent among voters. He’s urged the government to harness what he calls unprecedented national unity leading up to the World Cup.

TUTU: I haven’t seen so many people displaying our flag on their cars and every conceivable place. It’s just a fantastic thing, and we’re enormously grateful that it is there.

DE SAM LAZARO: Are you optimistic that it will reenergize South Africa? And if so, what gives you that optimism? You’ve expressed some reservations about the ability of this government to deliver the goods.

TUTU: I’ve always said I’m not an optimist. I’m a prisoner of hope, which is a different kettle of fish. Optimism is too light. Now to come to your question: I think that they do have amongst the cabinet people who are strategizers, people who are aware that there has been a kind of disillusionment among the people. I mean they’ve seen the protest demonstrations because people are upset at the slow delivery of services.

DE SAM LAZARO: Do you worry about the aftermath of Nelson Mandela’s passing?

TUTU: It’s going to be a horrendous moment in the life of our country. But human beings do have a capacity for adjusting. I mean we’re going to become a normal society, and we will not always be looking to Colossus to lead us.

DE SAM LAZARO: At the end of the day, Tutu said, he pins his hope for South Africa and for the world on what he calls humankind’s intrinsic goodness, the subject of a new book he coauthored with his Anglican priest daughter, Mpho Tutu. They argue human beings are hard-wired to do good.

TUTU: Fundamentally we are good, for you see a good person make us feel good, too. We felt good just watching a Chinese student standing in front of tanks. I mean knowing that he was not likely to succeed in stopping the carnage, but for a moment he did. He made those tanks swerve, and looking at that image our hearts leapt with an exhilaration. That said, yeah, that is how we should be. That is how I hope I would respond.

DE SAM LAZARO: You’ve written that evil will never have the last word.

TUTU: No. Sometimes it takes long.

DE SAM LAZARO: What is the terminal point where you say the last word is being uttered?

TUTU: For the ones who are suffering, it’s forever it seems, but happen it will. Just ask Hitler. Just ask Mussolini. Just ask Amin. Just ask the apartheid guys here. They used to strut around imagining they were totally invincible. You say, where are they today?

DE SAM LAZARO: For Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly, this is Fred de Sam Lazaro in Cape Town, South Africa.

Originally broadcast June 26, 2009

BOB ABERNETHY, anchor: It’s a common observation that one of the most important paths to peace between enemies is to learn to see others not as demonized stereotypes, but as unique human beings. When she was in the Middle East last month, Kim Lawton learned about the Parents Circle-Families Forum — Israeli Jews and Palestinian Muslims who have lost loved ones in their long conflict but have learned to replace hate with reconciliation, even friendship. Here is Kim’s special report.

KIM LAWTON: Since the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948, Palestinian refugee camps in the West Bank have been hotbeds of unrest and often scenes of angry confrontation between displaced Palestinians and Israeli soldiers. Because of the continuing military and political conflict, few Israeli civilians ever venture in. But don’t tell that to Rami Elhanan. On this day, he and his wife Nurit have come to the Dheisheh refugee camp near Bethlehem to visit their friend, Mazen Faraj. It’s is an unexpected friendship. Both have lost family members in the conflict. Yet their grief has brought them together.

MAZEN FARAJ: Today it’s our responsibility for our children and for our families to build something new.

RAMI ELHANAN: We put a crack in this wall of hatred and fear that divide these two nations, and we show another way. We show another possibility. We show the ability to listen to each other’s pain, which is essential if you want to get to any kind of reconciliation.

Mr. FARAJ: This was the first room for our house.

LAWTON: Faraj has lived in Dheisheh his entire life. During the early part of his childhood, fifteen people in his family lived in this one crowded room.

Mr. ELHANAN: This is the place he’s always talking about—that you don’t need someone to hate you to teach you how to hate when you grow up in a room like this.

LAWTON: In April of 2002, there was a violent confrontation between Israeli soldiers and Palestinians fighters outside Bethlehem’s Church of the Nativity, the site where Christian tradition holds that Jesus was born. Palestinian fighters holed up in the church, and Israeli soldiers laid siege. During a lull in the fighting, Faraj’s 62-year-old father went out to Jerusalem to get groceries. He was shot and killed by Israeli soldiers.

Mr. FARAJ: He got killed in April 2002 when he was coming back from Jerusalem to Bethlehem. The Israeli soldiers, they started shooting him and without any reason. No one can kill his soul. They succeeded to kill his body, but without his soul. His soul’s still around us and give us like the power every day, how to keep going in our lives.

LAWTON: But there is great pain on the Israeli side as well. Elhanan had 14-year-old daughter, Smadar. Of four children, she was the only daughter, and the family had called her “the princess.” On September 4, 1997, the first day of school, Smadar went to a popular shopping area in Jerusalem.

Mr. ELHANAN: And she went down the street with her girlfriends to buy new books for the new year. Two suicide bombers blew themselves up, killing five people that day, including three little girls. One of them was my 14-year-old Smadar.

LAWTON: Elhanan says he was overwhelmed by anger and despair.

Mr. ELHANAN: It took me almost a year to understand who I am, to try to recover, and to understand that I have to choose a way for myself and translate these feelings of anger and despair into something constructive and create some hope out of it. And I joined the Parents Circle and I found a meaning for my life.

LAWTON: The Parents Circle-Families Forum was launched in 1995 as a way to bring bereaved Israelis and Palestinians together. The group now has several hundred participants who’ve lost immediate family members because of the violence in this region. Organizers believe it’s the only project of its kind in an area where conflict is still ongoing. The nonprofit group sponsors face-to-face dialogue meetings for bereaved family members and public lectures about reconciliation.

Mr. ELHANAN: The minute I saw in that meeting the first bereaved Palestinian families as human beings I was completely shocked. It was the first time ever in my life that I meet Palestinians as human beings after so many years of demonizing each other. So this was the turning point.

LAWTON: Faraj, who was dealing with his own feelings of anger and revenge, went to one Parents Circle meeting where Elhanan spoke.

Mr. FARAJ: And it was this man talking about his suffering and his pain, too. But I told him, “What do you know about suffering and pain? You just live in Jerusalem. You are Israeli, you are the occupier, you are everything.” And then he starts to talk about his daughter, and then really I found out that, whoa, it’s the same pain.

LAWTON: The two men became close friends. Elhanan was drawn by Faraj’s humor.

Mr. ELHANAN: He’s the only guy in the world that makes me laugh.

LAWTON: Faraj couldn’t believe that Elhanan was willing to visit him in the refugee camp. They built a deep mutual respect.

Mr. FARAJ: He’s just a human being, and you can deal with him in an easy way, and you can build a discussion with him with easy way, and you can build the fight also in easy way, too. But the most important thing’s that he’ll respect the other.

Mr. ELHANAN: What he’s doing needs a lot of guts, and his ability to face the world, tell his truths after all the things that he’s been through, I think it’s admirable, and I really respect him for it.

LAWTON: Faraj and Elhanan started doing joint lectures for the Parents Circle.

Mr. ELHANAN: We use this enormous respect that the two societies have for people who paid the highest price possible to convey this message, to convey the message of dialogue, of reconciliation, of peace.

LAWTON: Elhanan and Faraj have given more than 1,000 joint lectures in Palestinian and Israeli schools. They say most of the kids have no idea that Palestinians and Israelis can be friends.

Mr. ELHANAN: If there is only one kid at the end of the class who nods his head with acceptance to this message, we saved one drop of blood. According to Judaism, this is the whole world.

LAWTON: The Parents Circle is nonsectarian, but is supported by several Muslim, Christian, and Jewish groups. In 2008, Catholic Relief Services brought Faraj and Elhanan on a speaking tour across the United States.

BURCU MUNYAS (Program Manager, Catholic Relief Services): They are giving a message of hope in the midst of hopelessness in the Holy Land. So we thought that this would be a strong message to bring to our US Catholic audiences.

LAWTON: For their part, Elhanan and Faraj try to keep the focus on relationship, not religion.

Mr. FARAJ: It’s the important things that we don’t want to make this conflict like a religion conflict.

LAWTON: Their work isn’t always easy. Both men have received sometimes strong criticism from within their respective communities.

Mr. ELHANAN: People tell me that I’m a traitor or a — but I think more people are impressed by my ability to translate the pain into hope.

Mr. FARAJ: I really believe in what I’m doing and — but not all the people they really accept that, but anyway, if you believe in something you have to continue.

LAWTON: Parents Circle supporters hope these relationships can be a model for others, which they believe will help further the political peace process.

Ms MUNYAS: By building trust with each other they become more and more ready to trust the other side, to compromise, and to tell their leaders that they are ready, that they can move ahead, they can compromise, and they can sign the peace agreements.

LAWTON: Faraj and Elhanan agree.

Mr. FARAJ: We have a different culture, a different religion, and different, also, conditions on the ground, too. So how we can find a way? This the problem. It’s not about that’s it, I found the solution for the conflict. No. But the first step, we have to know each other.

Mr. ELHANAN: I devote my life to go everywhere possible to tell the very simple truth that we are not doomed. It’s not our destiny to keep on killing each other, and we can stop it by talking to one another — that simple.

LAWTON: Simple in theory, much more elusive to work out. But they hope their relationship proves it is possible. I’m Kim Lawton in the West Bank.

BOB ABERNETHY, anchor: It’s a common observation that one of the most important paths to peace between enemies is to learn to see others not as demonized stereotypes, but as unique human beings. When she was in the Middle East last month, Kim Lawton learned about the Parents Circle-Families Forum — Israeli Jews and Palestinian Muslims who have lost loved ones in their long conflict but have learned to replace hate with reconciliation, even friendship. Here is Kim’s special report.

KIM LAWTON: Since the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948, Palestinian refugee camps in the West Bank have been hotbeds of unrest and often scenes of angry confrontation between displaced Palestinians and Israeli soldiers. Because of the continuing military and political conflict, few Israeli civilians ever venture in. But don’t tell that to Rami Elhanan. On this day, he and his wife Nurit have come to the Dheisheh refugee camp near Bethlehem to visit their friend, Mazen Faraj. It’s is an unexpected friendship. Both have lost family members in the conflict. Yet their grief has brought them together.

MAZEN FARAJ: Today it’s our responsibility for our children and for our families to build something new.

RAMI ELHANAN: We put a crack in this wall of hatred and fear that divide these two nations, and we show another way. We show another possibility. We show the ability to listen to each other’s pain, which is essential if you want to get to any kind of reconciliation.

Mr. FARAJ: This was the first room for our house.

LAWTON: Faraj has lived in Dheisheh his entire life. During the early part of his childhood, fifteen people in his family lived in this one crowded room.

Mr. ELHANAN: This is the place he’s always talking about—that you don’t need someone to hate you to teach you how to hate when you grow up in a room like this.

LAWTON: In April of 2002, there was a violent confrontation between Israeli soldiers and Palestinians fighters outside Bethlehem’s Church of the Nativity, the site where Christian tradition holds that Jesus was born. Palestinian fighters holed up in the church, and Israeli soldiers laid siege. During a lull in the fighting, Faraj’s 62-year-old father went out to Jerusalem to get groceries. He was shot and killed by Israeli soldiers.

Mr. FARAJ: He got killed in April 2002 when he was coming back from Jerusalem to Bethlehem. The Israeli soldiers, they started shooting him and without any reason. No one can kill his soul. They succeeded to kill his body, but without his soul. His soul’s still around us and give us like the power every day, how to keep going in our lives.

LAWTON: But there is great pain on the Israeli side as well. Elhanan had 14-year-old daughter, Smadar. Of four children, she was the only daughter, and the family had called her “the princess.” On September 4, 1997, the first day of school, Smadar went to a popular shopping area in Jerusalem.

Mr. ELHANAN: And she went down the street with her girlfriends to buy new books for the new year. Two suicide bombers blew themselves up, killing five people that day, including three little girls. One of them was my 14-year-old Smadar.

LAWTON: Elhanan says he was overwhelmed by anger and despair.

Mr. ELHANAN: It took me almost a year to understand who I am, to try to recover, and to understand that I have to choose a way for myself and translate these feelings of anger and despair into something constructive and create some hope out of it. And I joined the Parents Circle and I found a meaning for my life.

LAWTON: The Parents Circle-Families Forum was launched in 1995 as a way to bring bereaved Israelis and Palestinians together. The group now has several hundred participants who’ve lost immediate family members because of the violence in this region. Organizers believe it’s the only project of its kind in an area where conflict is still ongoing. The nonprofit group sponsors face-to-face dialogue meetings for bereaved family members and public lectures about reconciliation.

Mr. ELHANAN: The minute I saw in that meeting the first bereaved Palestinian families as human beings I was completely shocked. It was the first time ever in my life that I meet Palestinians as human beings after so many years of demonizing each other. So this was the turning point.

LAWTON: Faraj, who was dealing with his own feelings of anger and revenge, went to one Parents Circle meeting where Elhanan spoke.

Mr. FARAJ: And it was this man talking about his suffering and his pain, too. But I told him, “What do you know about suffering and pain? You just live in Jerusalem. ou are Israeli, you are the occupier, you are everything.” And then he starts to talk about his daughter, and then really I found out that, whoa, it’s the same pain.

LAWTON: The two men became close friends. Elhanan was drawn by Faraj’s humor.

Mr. ELHANAN: He’s the only guy in the world that makes me laugh.

LAWTON: Faraj couldn’t believe that Elhanan was willing to visit him in the refugee camp. They built a deep mutual respect.

Mr. FARAJ: He’s just a human being, and you can deal with him in an easy way, and you can build a discussion with him with easy way, and you can build the fight also in easy way, too. But the most important thing’s that he’ll respect the other.

Mr. ELHANAN: What he’s doing needs a lot of guts, and his ability to face the world, tell his truths after all the things that he’s been through, I think it’s admirable, and I really respect him for it.

LAWTON: Faraj and Elhanan started doing joint lectures for the Parents Circle.

Mr. ELHANAN: We use this enormous respect that the two societies have for people who paid the highest price possible to convey this message, to convey the message of dialogue, of reconciliation, of peace.

LAWTON: Elhanan and Faraj have given more than 1,000 joint lectures in Palestinian and Israeli schools. They say most of the kids have no idea that Palestinians and Israelis can be friends.

Mr. ELHANAN: If there is only one kid at the end of the class who nods his head with acceptance to this message, we saved one drop of blood. According to Judaism, this is the whole world.

LAWTON: The Parents Circle is nonsectarian, but is supported by several Muslim, Christian, and Jewish groups. In 2008, Catholic Relief Services brought Faraj and Elhanan on a speaking tour across the United States.

BURCU MUNYAS (Program Manager, Catholic Relief Services): They are giving a message of hope in the midst of hopelessness in the Holy Land. So we thought that this would be a strong message to bring to our US Catholic audiences.

LAWTON: For their part, Elhanan and Faraj try to keep the focus on relationship, not religion.

Mr. FARAJ: It’s the important things that we don’t want to make this conflict like a religion conflict.

LAWTON: Their work isn’t always easy. Both men have received sometimes strong criticism from within their respective communities.

Mr. ELHANAN: People tell me that I’m a traitor or a — but I think more people are impressed by my ability to translate the pain into hope.

Mr. FARAJ: I really believe in what I’m doing and — but not all the people they really accept that, but anyway, if you believe in something you have to continue.

LAWTON: Parents Circle supporters hope these relationships can be a model for others, which they believe will help further the political peace process.

Ms MUNYAS: By building trust with each other they become more and more ready to trust the other side, to compromise, and to tell their leaders that they are ready, that they can move ahead, they can compromise, and they can sign the peace agreements.

LAWTON: Faraj and Elhanan agree.

Mr. FARAJ: We have a different culture, a different religion, and different, also, conditions on the ground, too. So how we can find a way? This the problem. It’s not about that’s it, I found the solution for the conflict. No. But the first step, we have to know each other.

Mr. ELHANAN: I devote my life to go everywhere possible to tell the very simple truth that we are not doomed. It’s not our destiny to keep on killing each other, and we can stop it by talking to one another — that simple.

LAWTON: Simple in theory, much more elusive to work out. But they hope their relationship proves it is possible. I’m Kim Lawton in the West Bank.

BOB ABERNETHY, anchor: Especially since 9/11, major Christian and Muslim scholars and religious officials have been working together to find ways believers in each religion can live side by side in peace. Next month at the Vatican, the pope is due to meet leading Muslims. This past summer, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia sponsored an interfaith conference in Spain. More such conferences are scheduled in Britain, Jordan and Washington, D.C. And at Yale University recently there was a major week-long gathering of top Muslim and primarily Protestant leaders.

Nearly 150 Muslim and Christian scholars from 37 countries were invited to the Yale conference by its co-organizers, Professor Miroslav Volf of the Yale Divinity School and Prince Ghazi of Jordan, religious adviser to Jordan’s king. What they called the “common word” that united them was love of God and love of neighbor. They also acknowledged their common fear of the catastrophe that could occur if Christians and Muslims, half the world’s population, became enemies.

Professor MIROSLAV VOLF (Director, Center for Faith and Culture, Yale Divinity School): If we don’t learn to live with one another we will not live. We will either love each other as neighbors or we won’t be. I believe that it is an insult to me as a Christian to say that I cannot love as neighbor somebody who thinks differently than I do. Where did we ever get that idea?

ABERNETHY: The Christian and Muslim scholars spoke openly not only about the ideas they share but about their big, sometimes clashing differences, practical and theological, for instance over the nature of God. Muslims disagree strongly with the Christian doctrine of the Trinity — God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Dr. SEYYED HOSSEIN NASR (University Professor of Islamic Studies, George Washington University): For Muslims, only God can be divine — God in his oneness and his absoluteness and his not having anything like it. And that means that Islam opposes or even cannot understand the idea of certain Christians concerning the Trinity, in which really you have three divines.

ABERNETHY: For Christians, terrorism is a major concern, but Volf notes that violent Islamic extremism is backed by only a very small minority of Muslims and that Christianity also has practiced violence.

Prof. VOLF: Incredible violence has been perpetrated in the name of Christian faith, even though love of God, love of neighbor are at the heart of that faith. I think something similar may be said of Islam as well.

ABERNETHY: A big issue for Muslims is when Christian evangelizing — telling people about the faith — becomes proselytizing, actively trying to convert. Some Muslims say Christian evangelizing seems like colonialism.

Dr. NASR: That’s a very, very major problem that cannot be overlooked and cannot be put in the closet. I think the evangelicals have to rethink this issue.

ABERNETHY: Leith Anderson, president of the National Association of Evangelicals, insists that evangelical Christians must share their faith. But he says they can do that respectfully.

LEITH ANDERSON (President, National Association of Evangelicals): We proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ, and we welcome the opportunity for people to believe. There’s a difference between that and proselytizing, and in my definition proselytizing can be coercive. It can be manipulative. I don’t think there is ever an excuse to be disrespectful to other people.

Prof. VOLF: If evangelism isn’t an expression of love of neighbor it isn’t Christian evangelizing, and love of neighbor includes not only what I say to the neighbor, but how I say that. I’m very hopeful, though it’s a thorny and certainly an issue right now that tears the communities apart.

ABERNETHY: Many Muslim believers want to convert Christians to Islam.

Prof. VOLF: They believe that Islam contains the truth about God. Islam is not just an option. Islam is not like one of the many dishes — you like Thai chicken and I like pizza and that’s fine. They believe Islam to be a matter of truth and not simply a matter of taste.

ABERNETHY: And so do Christians?

Prof. VOLF: And so do Christians, exactly.

ABERNETHY: Many Muslim countries are closed to missionaries, a policy Christians see as a denial of religious liberty.

Prof. VOLF: Does a person have a right to change his or her own religion? This is a fundamental human right, just like a right to freedom of speech.

ABERNETHY: Volf says dialogue can help resolve many differences and that even when it can’t, Christians and Muslims can still get along. On issues such as global warming and helping the poor, Volf believes Christians and Muslims can and should work together. Meanwhile, he says his personal encounter with Islam has strengthened his Christianity.

Prof. VOLF: I will tell you very — quite honestly after my engagement with Muslim friends, I pray more than I used to pray. My prayer life has been enriched by my encounter with some Muslims, encouraged by their devotion and also enriched by the ways in which they pray. Have I compromised in this way at all? No. To the contrary, I’ve gone deeper in my faith, and I think my love for God has been deepened and made more intelligent in a sense, more rich by that very encounter.

ABERNETHY: As he helped close the conference, Volf returned to his view of what’s at stake.

Prof. VOLF (speaking to conference participants): Either love or death — when you think about it, this is the challenge that we face today. Let us learn to love all our neighbors and let us do that in the name of our common future and in the name of our one God.

ABERNETHY: Prince Ghazi read the final conference document, affirming, among other points, that God is absolute, his love infinite; and that everyone has a right to the preservation of life, dignity, and religion.

Prince GHAZI (Special Advisor to H.M. King Abdullah II, Jordan, speaking to conference participants): Have we anybody who will not sign his name to this, of the participants?

ABERNETHY: No one spoke.

Prince GHAZI: Thank you.

ABERNETHY: None of the participants claimed resolution of their differences. But, in Prince Ghazi’s words, they hoped their joint commitment to loving God and neighbor will help all religions heal, not wound.