Over the past 40 years, a vast scientific, and after that popularizing, literature has appeared in the West devoted to the problems of Islamic-Christian dialogue. Today we can already speak with confidence about the emergence of a fundamentally new interdisciplinary scientific and theological direction in humanitarian knowledge.
Interdisciplinary — since the study of dialogue necessarily involves a combination of different methods and skills of sciences such as comparative religious studies, oriental studies, hermeneutics, theology ... We can say meta-interdisciplinary, since each of the listed sciences that has incorporated a new direction (let's call it science dialogue) is itself interdisciplinary.
What should be understood by the dialogue of religions and, in particular, by the Islamic-Christian dialogue? In a broad sense, this is the whole complex of relations that develop between the two religions (although some authors argue with such a point of view with good reason). We must recognize that such a dialogue has always existed.
No matter how hostile the attitude of one religion towards another is, between them there is a constant communication, a latent exchange of values. One religious culture borrowed from another primarily what it lacked in its own potential. Exchange could be more or less productive, but it has always existed. However, today under the dialogue of religions we increasingly understand not the spontaneous, underlying process of the exchange of cultural information, but a conscious orientation towards mutual understanding. This complex process requires both theoretical reflection and institutional design. In this sense, the dialogue of religions is just beginning. Therefore, the science of dialogue has one essential feature: it equally explores and creates dialogue, it is not only a science of dialogue, but also the science of dialogue.
Constructive relations between believers of different religions are impossible without recognizing the right of another to be different. Recognition of the right to otherness inevitably entails interest in it. Therefore, in the science of dialogue, so much attention is paid to the ideas of Muslims and Christians about each other. “This is a surprisingly fascinating question — how do people judge each other and see each other, especially when they belong to different cultures and even religions. It becomes even more fascinating when there are obvious changes in perception, since old models and paradigms of ideas about another give way to direct interaction. ”
Compare the two statements.
“There is also the Ishmael religion, which still prevails today, misleading the nations and foreshadowing the coming of the Antichrist,” these are the opening words of the 100th chapter of the book On the Heresies of John Damaskin, in the true sense of the legislator of the medieval polemic with Islam.
“The Church also respects Muslims who worship the one God, living and being, merciful and omnipotent, the Creator of heaven and earth, who spoke to people”, these are the initial words of the 3rd section of Nostra aetate — Declaration II of the Vatican Council the attitude of the Church towards non-Christian religions.
Between these two statements — 12 centuries of the most complicated relationship between Christians and Muslims, which quite often represent as an eternal, irreconcilable confrontation, the battle of the sword and scimitar, but in reality they were far from so unambiguous. To consider the development of Islamic-Christian relations as a long way from mutual curses to the beginnings of mutual understanding is also somewhat naive. Suffice it to recall the De pace fidei (On the consent of faith) of Nikolai Kuzansky, in which he expressed the idea of “a unified religion in all the rituals, which belongs to all intelligent beings.”
Considering senseless any attempts to convert Muslims to Christianity, as well as the Crusades, Nikolai Kuzansky, together with John from Segovia, developed a draft of a meeting-discussion of Christians and Muslims (John gave it the name — contraferentia).
However, there is no reason to argue that negative motives have prevailed in Islamic-Christian relations for many centuries, to put it mildly.
The statement that the Church respects Muslims is a great start, but this is clearly not enough to develop dialogue, just as the statement that Christians and Muslims believe in one single God is not enough. Apparently, a genuine dialogue is impossible until more or less positive answers are given to the fundamental, ultimate questions that all believers face in one form or another. The most extreme of these is the question of salvation.