The pitfalls of "interfaith dialogue"

http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/2013/03/stephen-coughlin-and-robert-spencer-on-the-pitfalls-of-interfaith-dialogue.html

 

March 24, 2013

Stephen Coughlin and Robert Spencer on the pitfalls of "interfaith dialogue"

Recently Robert Spencer interviewed former Pentagon Sharia expert Stephen Coughlin, who spoke at our inaugural AFDI event at CPAC in 2010, on his ABN show. They discussed the pitfalls of "interfaith dialogue," a trap that Jews and Christians frequently fall into. Spencer explains about Muslim/Christian dialogue:

I am all for dialogue between Muslims and Christians when it is honest and not based on false pretenses. There doesn't seem to be any use to dialogue that ignores difficulties and points of disagreement rather than confronting them. They won't go away if ignored. I discuss the genuine prospects for dialogue and its pitfalls at length in my book Not Peace But A Sword, which will be published next week by Catholic Answers.

One thing that must be recognized is that for many Muslim spokesmen and leaders, dialogue with adherents of other religions is simply a proselytizing mechanism designed to convert the "dialogue" partner to Islam, as the Muslim Brotherhood theorist Sayyid Qutb explained: "The chasm between Islam and Jahiliyyah [the society of unbelievers] is great, and a bridge is not to be built across it so that the people on the two sides may mix with each other, but only so that the people of Jahiliyyah may come over to Islam."

In line with this, 138 Muslim scholars wrote to Pope Benedict XVI, inviting him to dialogue. The title of the document they sent to him was A Common Word Between Us and You. Reading the entire Qur’anic verse from which the phrase “a common word between us and you” was taken makes the Common Word initiative’s agenda clear: “Say: ‘People of the Book! Come now to a word common between us and you, that we serve none but God, and that we associate not aught with Him, and do not some of us take others as Lords, apart from God.’ And if they turn their backs, say: ‘Bear witness that we are Muslims’” (3:64). Since Muslims consider the Christian confession of the divinity of Christ to be an unacceptable association of a partner with God, this verse is saying that the “common word” that Muslims and the People of the Book should agree on is that Christians should discard one of the central tenets of their faith and essentially become Muslims. Not a promising basis for an honest and mutually respectful dialogue of equals.