[Islam-Online- Islamic]

As pluralistic societies in the West become the norm and the "global village" becomes a reality, ecumenical dialogues gain prominence. Ecumenical dialogues, which, like many other discussions, first began among scholars as an exclusively academic activity, now take place in churches, communities, and other sociopolitical organizations. In the United States, in particular, attempts are being made to introduce educational curricula that are sensitive to the culture and religious orientations of minorities.
The very feasibility of a Christian-Muslim dialogue should be called into question. Can the Islamic world enter into a dialogue with the secular West? Any dialogue or discourse requires a common language, a shared worldview, and some basic agreement on some of the fundamental axioms around which a worldview is formed. I fear that the Islamic world and the West no longer have such a common language.
In the present discussion, I will offer an analysis and interpretation of Muslim-Christian dialogue that calls for a reflection on the readiness of Muslims to have a meaningful dialogue with the West. I argue that the necessary condition for a meaningful dialogue between traditional Islam and the secular West does not exist and, therefore, that any attempt to do so at this time either will not succeed or will become a superficial survey of what we have in common, such as the Ten Commandments. To elucidate, I will first offer a model of a successful dialogue between Muslims and Christians based on the medieval philosophical dialogue between Muslim and Christian philosophers. I will then apply the conclusions drawn from this model to contemporary attempts at such ecumenical dialogues.
Any student of medieval philosophy can observe two distinct periods in the history of medieval philosophy, defined here as early and later, each of which has distinct characteristics. The early period belongs to the Church fathers who laid the groundwork for Christian philosophical and theological frameworks. Early Christian philosophical writings of such figures as Augustine, Boethius, John Scotus, St. Anselm, Peter Abaillard, and others were responses to specific questions of an intellectual nature. Of course, Greek philosophy and its proponents in Christendom were clearly there, but, as their works reflect, Christian philosophers merely adopted certain concepts from Greek philosophers in order to offer a rational defense of the faith. Early Christian philosophy, having been influenced by the Greeks alone, dealt with specific issues and attempted to find solutions to problems that Christianity was facing. In this regard, the two civilizations, Greek and Christianity, were engaged in a dialogue that was immensely beneficial to the enrichment of Christian intellectual thought.
On the Islamic side, such early Muslim philosophers as al Kindi and al Farabi also followed the same pattern, namely, their views, concerns, and comments were responses to Greek philosophers, in particular Plato and Aristotle. When reading early Islamic philosophy, one clearly gets the impression that it too was engaged only with the Greeks and that their central concerns became the Muslims' central concerns as well. Clearly, some sort of dialogue was taking place between Muslims and Greeks on the philosophical level simply because Muslims needed to learn the discursive method of the Greek philosophers in order to defend, in a rational manner, the tenets of the faith. The two cultures differed profoundly, which made the dialogue both necessary and fruitful. This was necessary, since the perspective of one culture (Greek) was intellectually stimulating, and it was fruitful since it was through this philosophical dialogue that Muslim philosophers were able to adopt the Greek worldview and reinterpret it within the Islamic religious universe.
As examples of this dialogue, we can mention such figures as al Farabi, Ibn Sina, al Ghazzali, and Suhrawardi, each of whom confronted the Greek challenge in a different way. Al Farabi, the founder of logic in the tradition of Islamic philosophy, elaborated on Aristotle's logic on the one hand and adopted the neo-Platonic schemes and Plato's concept of archetypes on the other. This allowed him to engage the Greek philosophical tradition in a dialogue and yet to Islamicize that tradition. Ibn Sina, the grand synthesizer, effectively brought together Plato, Aristotle, and neo-Platonic ideas as well as al Farabi into a single coherent paradigm. The coherency, consistency and the depth of Ibn Sina's engagement with Greek philosophy was such that it became a turning point in the history of Islamic philosophy.
Much can be said about Ibn Sina and his encounter with the Greeks and other intellectual ideas, but this is beyond the scope of this work. Suffice it to say that Ibn Sina and the Greeks had a common language, objectives, and concerns and therefore operated in the same intellectual universe, although there were major differences between them. This point is of great significance in our discussion of a Muslim-Christian dialogue.
Following Ibn Sina, the Muslim philosopher who epitomizes ecumenical dialogue between the Islamic intellectual tradition and that of other traditions, such as the Zoroastrian, neo-Platonic, Greek, and Pythagorean, is none other than Shihab al Din Suhrawardi. To prove that the inner dimension of all divinely revealed religions is sacred and a manifestation of the divine, Suhrawardi synthesized various elements of the above-mentioned traditions: He adopted Aristotelian logic (which he nevertheless criticized), Plato's theory of archetypes, elements from the Pythagoreans, Ibn Sina's ontological hierarchy (which he modified), and various elements from other traditions. Suhrawardi's vast synthesis of philosophical and mystical elements resulted in the formation of a new philosophical paradigm that is both profoundly Islamic and ecumenical in nature. What allowed him to borrow and synthesize philosophical concepts from other traditions was that he felt at home with the spiritual and intellectual message of these other schools of thought and religious traditions.