SIXTEEN years ago on November 29, 1996 the Bishops-Ulama Conference was born in the wake of the Government of the Philippines-Moro National Liberation Front (GRP-MNLF) peace agreement at the suggestion of former president Fidel Ramos our group was establish to support the implementation of the peace accord.

We understood this to mean that we would promote the understanding of Christian and Islamic values through interfaith dialogue and collaboration. Our main focus was supposed to be the implementation of the peace agreement.

This was the reason why we had joint meetings with the officers and men of the Armed Forces of the Philippines and the Philippine National Police ending up with a covenant. We called ourselves BUC-AFP-PNP Peace Forum. We had many dialogues with local government units for the promotion of the Mindanao Week of Peace.

When the memorandum of agreement on ancestral domain was aborted because of lack of consultation we launched with the help of the academe a region-wide Konsult Mindanaw involving thousands of people, Muslim and Christian, in focused group discussion. We gave the result to the government, to the MILF central committee, and to the GRP peace panel. Our findings are now part of the over-all plan of the Mindanao Development Authority.

Through these many and diverse interactions with the government people, military, academe, and the civic groups as well as nongovernment organization’s, our main objective was always the meeting of the hearts more than facilitating the meeting of the minds among our peace and dialogue partners.

We did the same when we were invited by the Pakistani government to share our experience of dialogue with the religious leaders of the country of Pakistan. The same was our approach with our peace partners at the Multi-Faith Centre in Griffith University in Brisbane, Australia. We extended our network to the two big Muslim groups in Indonesia, the Muhammadiyah and the Nhadatul Ulama as well as with the big Protestant group in Asia the Christian Conference of Asias.

Meeting of the hearts for us is the same as friendship which we believe is the basis of sincere and effective dialogue. This way we go beyond peace as the absence of war (eirene to the Greeks) and peace as an accord on paper (pax to the Romans). We are now on Shalom (peace in Hebrew which means wholeness, integrity, harmony of the individual and of the community).

Shalom is the root word for salam, the Arabic word for peace. And islam is derived from salam. This Judeo-Christian and Islamic understanding of peace is to us still lacking in the peace process. This is what we mean by meeting of the hearts and we are promoting this through seminars on faith, culture and dialogue for peace.