"Saudi King Abdullah seeks stability by reaching out on religion:" wants to be the 'Vatican of Islam'

Nina Shea of the Hudson Institute ... had been instrumental in leading the US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) effort on evaluation of the Islamic Saudi Academy (ISA) Islamic studies texts that has become, as Jim Lafferty of the Traditional Values Coalition remarked: 'a hot potato'. Shea was in the midst of another project directed at the Saudi Wahhabi hate texts. During the conversation she remarked about what the Saudi King Abdullah was up to holding a high profile gathering of Muslims scholars, both Sunni and Shia, in the holy city of Mecca. This Financial Times article about Abdullah's 'dialogue initiative with the major sects in Islam, as well as, outreach to Christians and Jews, presented an interesting tableau of what occurred last week: ...