A leading French rabbi, imam and Jesuit priest have collaborated on a book that explores verses in their own scriptures that are offensive to other religions, writes Tom Heneghan.

David Meyer, rabbi of the International Jewish Center in Brussels, said at a presentation of Les Versets douloureux ("The Painful Verses") last week in Paris that he had the idea for the book when his congregants asked him how he could talk to Muslims given that the Qur'an contained passages hostile to Jews.

Rabbi Meyer said he had been frustrated by interfaith meetings that avoided tough issues, and this had prompted him to seek a different kind of dialogue with Sohaib Bencheikh, head of the Higher Institute of Islamic Sciences in Marseilles, and Fr Yves Simoens, Professor of Scripture at the Centre Sèvres faculty of philosophy and Catholic theology in Paris.

Fr Simoens focused on the Gospel of John, which some people have criticised as being a source of Christian hatred of Jews, while Rabbi Meyer chose, among others, God's command to Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac, which seemed to justify killing in the name of religion. One of Islam's most painful verses, Imam Bencheikh said, was the hadith, "Kill him who changes his religion", a saying of Muhammad used to outlaw apostasy in some Muslim states. The imam said the verse was "an aberration".