Let’s hope that Queen Elizabeth lives another fifty years. Ruth Gledhill’s blog at The Times reports on the travels and words of Prince Charles:

On tour in Egypt with the Duchess of Cornwall, the Prince of Wales has called for greater tolerance between the Islamic and Western worlds. In a speech at Al-Azhar university in Cairo, he has also had a go at those who published the Danish cartoons, expressing concern over the ‘failure to listen and to respect what is precious and sacred to others.’ . . . It is all most commendable, but I just can’t help but wonder how Abdul Rahman, facing the death penalty in Afghanistan for apostasy, feels about the Prince urging us to more tolerance. It seems bizarre that in Afghanistan, as the Bishop of Rochester told me yesterday, British soldiers, fighting under the banner of our monarch, are being injured and killed for the sake of upholding a regime that executes apostates who convert to Christianity.

[ . . . ] It seems unlikely that we can expect much defending of Britain’s historic faith from the future head of the Church of England. In Britain, our future monarch, perhaps on line to become the first truly Multi-Cultural Monarch, has already made it clear in his 1994 BBC interview that he wishes to be defender of faith rather than Defender of the Faith when he ascends the throne.

The Prince was awarded an honorary degree by the Al-Azhar University in Cairo. In his acceptance speech, he makes frequent reference to a speech he gave in 1993. Here are some excerpts from his Cairo address:

In that [1993] speech, I talked about the history of Europe and the Islamic world – how they were inextricably entwined, and how, through the centuries, the giving and taking on both sides had contributed so greatly to what we have become today. History shows what giant leaps of creativity in knowledge – in science, literature and the arts – have occurred when the members of the Abrahamic family have worked together.

Can we not draw inspiration from the great explosion of knowledge and understanding which took place under the Abbassids between the ninth and thirteenth centuries, when their capital Baghdad was a world centre of learning; or from Islamic Spain between the tenth and the fourteenth centuries, when in cities such as Cordoba and Toledo, the work of Christian, Muslim and Jewish scholars led to the flowering of the Renaissance? We need to remember that we in the West are in debt to the scholars of Islam, for it was thanks to them that during the Dark Ages in Europe the treasures of classical learning were kept alive.

Thank you very much, Islam.

Skipping ahead by a millenium or so, Charles bemoans the current distrust between the faiths and singles out the media for responsibility:

I believe with all my heart that responsible men and women must work to restore mutual respect between faiths, and that we should do all we can to overcome the distrust that poisons so many people’s lives. This, of course, is made infinitely more difficult by the stereotypes and absurdities propagated by certain sections of the Media.

The Prince is very concerned about “the immense environmental crisis threatening our entire planet” and sees Islam as the answer:

What, then, can we learn from Islam that will help us re-integrate ourselves with Nature? Can we not see the urgent need before it is too late to blend the intuitive genius of the East with the practical genius of the West?

Next, he pays his respects to Arab hospitality:

Generous, hospitable welcome to strangers and to those on their travels is justifiably a proud element of Arab culture. We in Britain have made great efforts to welcome people of other faiths, and to enable them to preserve their unique identities, while at the same time accommodating themselves to British culture. There are now more than a million and a half British Muslims. They enrich British society in countless ways, as, I am sure, do the Christian minorities in Muslim nations.

Of course, we all know how well Christians (like the Egyptian Copts) are treated in Muslim nations.

A speech like this wouldn’t be complete without a verbal grenade tossed at globalization:

I believe we must protect the integrity of all our traditions – Muslim, Christian and Jewish – acknowledging and celebrating our rich diversity which, at the end of the day, is our only guarantee against the domination of a uniform, monocultural, global culture, whether religious or secular.

God Save the Queen.