A number of prominent Arab Muslims and Christians-intellectuals, religious scholars, and people engaged in public life-met together in Beirut in May 1995. The Middle East Council of Churches facilitated this meeting, and it resulted in founding "The Arab Working Group on Muslim-Christian Dialogue." The group included members from Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, Jordan, Palestine, the Sudan, and the United Arab Emirates.

They shared a firm belief in coexistence between Muslims and Christians in a society where freedom, justice, equality, and the rights of citizenship prevail.

They were cognizant of the need to work together in addressing internal concerns and in facing the external dangers that threaten the people, Muslims and Christians, of the one Arab homeland;

And they were aware that people of faith, following the dictates of their respective beliefs, must form an alliance to fulfill their obligation toward their Arab nation and homeland, an alliance to help foster national unity and to strengthen a sense of belonging to one nation embracing all its citizens no matter their religious affiliations, helping them transcend confessional or clannish partisanship so that, all together, they might work for the nation as a whole.