Islamic-Christian dialogue -problems and obstacles to be pondered and overcome

Muslim World

Volumn 88, Issue 3-4, 1998, Pages 218-237

  Nasr, Seyyed Hossein ^a  

^a GEORGE WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 61049236458     PISSN: 00274909     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1478-1913.1998.tb03658.x     Document Type: Article

References (15)

1. In a sense of course all the issues discussed in this essay are theological, but in this context by theological issues we mean those dealing with theology in the more strict sense of the term.
2. On our debate with Hick on major theological issues in Muslim-Christian dialogue see A. Asian, "Religions and the Concept of the Ultimate-An Interview with John Hick and Seyyed Hossein Nasr," Islamic Quarterly 40 (1996): 266-83.
3. We use the term esoteric to mean the inward dimension and inner reality of things and not occultism with which it is often confused in academic studies of religions.
4. See F. Schuon, Christianily' Islam-Essays on Esoteric Ecumenism trans. G. Polit (Bloomington, IN: World Wisdom Books, 1985).
5. See our Knowledge and the Sacred'(Albany. NY: The State University of New York Press, 1991), chapter nine, 280-308.
6. We have explained these differences in our Ideals and Realities of Islam (London: Harper/Collins, 1994), chapter IV, 93-120.
7. A case in point is that in 1996 in the debate at Oxford, England, to build a new edifice for the Center of Islamic Studies, some wrote in a local paper that Oxford should not allow minarets amidst the Church spirals of Oxford (in fact the edifice is not a mosque and does not have a minaret) because no churches are allowed in the Islamic world. An Englishman soon reminded the readers of the newspaper in question of what the sky lines of cities like Cairo or Beirut, combining minarets and spirals, really look like.
8. By this assertion we do not mean in any way to defend secularism or praise its curtailing the power of Christianity in the West but only to state a historical fact.
9. There are now some signs of change in this attitude in certain Christian circles. both Protestant and Catholic, which are trying to present Christianity to the non-Western world independent of the particular embellishments of Western civilization.
10. By modernism we do not mean what is simply contemporary, but a particular worldview which places man rather than God at the center of things and which arose in the West during the European Renaissance, spreading from the eighteenth century onward to other parts of the globe. R. Guenon, The Crisis of the Modern IVorld, trans. O. Osborne (Ghent, NY: Sophia Perennis et Universalis, 1996);
11. also W.N. Perry, C hallenges to a Secuiar Socicty (Oakton, VA: The Foundation for Traditional Studies, 1996).
12. It is of significance that there has been much less dialogue between Islam and those elements of Christianity which have been theologically much more conservative such as traditional Catholicism, conservative Protestantism and Orthodoxy than with the more "liberal" segments of the Christian community. In the last few years, however, an important number of dialogues have taken place between both Russian and Greek Orthodoxy and Islam and continue to do so. These exchanges are bound to be of great significance for Christian and Muslim dialogue in general, not only politically but also theologically, given the orthodox nature of both sides.
13. For the whole question of change and permanence in the traditional and modern context see S.H. Nasr, Knowledge and the Sacred, 221ff.
14. See T. Lindbom, The Tares and the Good Grain, trans. A. Moore (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1988)
15. "Tavern of Ruin" or kharābāt is the symbol of the Sufi center in classical Persian poetry.