Outline by Dr Asghar Ali Engineer*, 8 June 2005

Embargoed against delivery

Inter-faith dialogue has become vital necessity in a religiously plural society. When various religious communities live together various misunderstandings are bound to arise. Besides that often power struggle and share in jobs and economic resources bring about conflict and religion and religious identities are invariably invoked to contest each other. The struggle becomes acrimonious if religious pluralism is of recent origin.

Such conflict needs to be tackled on various levels: religious, social, economic and political. Since religion is invariably invoked the need for inter-religious dialogue arises. Inter-religious dialogue could be both structured around certain issues or could be absolutely general, depending on the context of the situation. Structured dialogue around specific issues like terrorism, peace, inter-faith relations, women issues etc. could be more focussed and more useful.

Also, one should not be selective in projecting ones faith tradition, selecting the best and ignoring what causes problems. It should be authentic encounter between the two or more faiths keeping in mind what is scriptural, what is historical, social and political. That will be much more helpful.

Also, inter-faith dialogue should not be with a view to convert the other but to understand the other. One should undertake dialogue with a genuine spirit to understand the other, not to confront the other.

A genuine encounter should also take dialogue of life into account. Living together and facing challenges of life with a spirit of togetherness can be immensely useful. This could be done by identifying problem areas and resolving those problem areas. If problem areas are scriptural then scripture needs to be re-interpreted considering it historical context. If the problem areas is socio-cultural, there should be serious attempt to understand each other and if the problem areas is political or sharing of economic resources, a just solution should be found. Historical animosities should be avoided and need for contemporary co-existence emphasised.

*Dr Asghar Ali Engineer is chairman of the Centre for study of society and secularism, and director of the Institute of Islamic Studies.