Common Ground highlighted an article in Pakistan’s Daily Times in which Islamic Scholar Genevieve Abdo criticises interfaith dialogue as being “misguided” and “dangerous”, because we are “[m]erely embracing Muslims who are already converted to a Western school of thought … [and] avoiding the fact that there are profound differences between Muslims in the East and non-Muslims in the West.”

She says that a far more effective effort would be to appeal to the disaffected youth in Europe and the Muslim world who “loathe the US and much of what it represents … Despite the overwhelming evidence of a decline in the West’s relationship with the Islamic world, it still has no effective foreign policy strategy for engaging Islamist leaders and Muslim societies in a meaningful way.”

I don’t question that creating positive opportunites for disaffected youth, anywhere, is critical to building a positive future, and I also agree that the “West” has failed miserably in effectively engaging with the Islamic world. This has been mainly due to a bad combination of acting in self-interest rather than for the greater good, paternalism, and bigotry – on both sides.

Progress will be extremely difficult, however, without achieving a better understanding of, and between our faiths and worldviews. Interfaith dialogue is only as good as the distance it’s willing to go – if it is unwilling to go beyond commonalities, then I agree with Abdo that it is pointless. But understanding those commonalities, and building trust are critical first steps that cannot be bypassed.

Some of the groups I’m involved with are starting to discuss the more controversial issues, and that’s fantastic. We are discussing them as close friends, and we have a personal stake in positive outcomes. To us, that’s a lot more meaningful than another government programme with well-intentioned but inexperienced bureaucrats throwing money someone else’s social problems.

Dave