No one would have ever imagined associating Saudi Arabia with audacity in religious matters. Islam is practiced there in its most intransigent form - Wahabism, a variant on one of Sunni Islam's four great schools of thought, Hanbalism. The kingdom is also well-known for its inflexibility with respect to other religions - which may be practiced in that country underground only and in the most complete secrecy. This intransigence pertains as much to the thousands of - mostly Catholic - Philippine immigrants as to Shiite and Ismaelian Saudis of the Hasa and Najran provinces, whom the most radical Sunni sheiks too often hold to be miscreants.

    Yet it's the Saudi sovereign, King Abdullah Ben Abdelaziz Al-Saud, who, on Wednesday, in the so very symbolic land of Spain, opened an interreligious conference that proclaims its intention of bringing together the three great religions of the Book, accustomed up until now to separate dialogues. Coming from a man who was long presented as an out-and-out conservative, and who, in the evening of his life in 2005, succeeded to the highest responsibilities in the land of Mecca and Medina, the initiative compels respect.

    The first Saudi sovereign to visit the Vatican, where he met Benedict XVI, today Abdullah does not fear evoking the common values of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. In the same spirit, he multiplies overtures to the Shiites, in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere, even though there still remains much to be done to disarm sectarian hatreds.

    This overture also suits self-interest, properly understood. The kingdom has been trying to change its image since the 2001 attacks, the authors of which were mostly Saudi. The kingdom today is in the sights of Islamist extremists that it had armed and which turned against it after having gone to war in Afghanistan. In the end, non-believers will certainly have trouble rejoicing over a dialogue between a still-very-rigid Islam and the defensive Catholicism that Pope Benedict, former Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, strives to build. Because religion is still too often manipulated to serve hatred, the Madrid conference is nonetheless excellent news.

    Translation: Truthout French language editor Leslie Thatcher.