Drawing on his unique perspective as a Pakistani Anglican bishop, the Reverend Michael Nazir Ali, currently Anglican Bishop of Rochester (U.K.), discussed the promise and perils of contemporary Christian-Muslim relations at a November 1 Center seminar co-sponsored by the International Fellowship of Evangelical Mission Theologians (INFEMIT). Having long served as the Bishop of Raiwind in the Anglican Church of Pakistan, he offered a well-informed view of the religious situation in South Asia.

Nazir Ali insisted that the unresolved Kashmir dispute between India and Pakistan accounts for most Islamic radicalism in South Asia, which is home to about 400 million Muslims, one-third of the world’s Muslim population. Analysts who contend that it is the Israeli-Palestinian confl ict that largely stimulates this region’s resentment of the West are simply wrong, he said. To help counter this resentment, Nazir Ali proposed ways of fostering a more constructive and fruitful Christian-Muslim theological dialogue.

His comments elicited numerous questions from the policy analysts, government officials, religious leaders, and journalists in attendance. They included David Abramson of the U.S. Department of State, Walter Berns of the American Enterprise Institute, John Casson of the British Embassy, Karin Finkler of Congressman Pitts’s office, Aziz Haniffa of India Abroad, Persis Khambatta of the Asia Foundation, Diane Knippers of the Institute for Religion and Democracy, Stanley Kurtz of the Hudson Institute, Barbara Ledeen of the Senate Republican Conference, Paul Marshall of Freedom House, and Tad Stahnke of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom. Center fellow Timothy Samuel Shah moderated the exchange.