DAR AL HARB / ISLAM: MOSLEM CATHOLIC EXCHANGE

Muslim scholars, clerics to begin exchange program with U.S. Catholics

PHILADELPHIA: A group of Muslim clerics and scholars from the Middle East was to begin a four-day visit to the Philadelphia area on Monday with a stop at a downtown homeless shelter.

The group, which includes two Egyptians, two Jordanians and one Syrian, was scheduled to meet the staff at Saint John's Hospice, operated by the Archdiocese of Philadelphia.

The visit is also expected to include a stop at St. Charles Borromeo Seminary in Wynnewood on Monday afternoon, as well as Villanova University's Center for Arabic and Islamic Studies, Tenth Presbyterian Church and the Al-Aqsa Islamic Society.

The trip is part of a U.S. State Department program run with the cooperation of the International Visitors Council of Philadelphia.

The two-year program involves clerics and scholars of Islam spending three weeks visiting three cities in the United States. It also includes a reciprocal exchange for American clerics to Egypt, Syria and Jordan.




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