A Critical Analysis of Interfaith Dialogue Movement in Pakistan and its Future Prospects

Abstract

In modern ages, the nations, faiths and communities are more in need of better relationship, tolerance and peace from any other phase of the human history. Therefore, interfaith dialogue has become a most significant activity in this age of the conflict and clash. Due to its importance, many religious, non-religious even political parties have deeply involved in it. In Pakistani perspective, the Christian Study Center, Rawalpindi, has a historical role to promote Muslim-Christian Dialogue. The Christian Study Center, Rawalpindi one of the major dialogue institute in Pakistan is busy in holding interfaith dialogical meetings, workshops, seminars and conferences on national and international levels from past 50 years. Definitely, this activity has some kinds of positive and negative impacts on Pakistani society. Therefore, Muslim scholars as well as some Christians show their concerns towards modern interfaith dialogue movement due to some reasons. In this situation, the basic question is, do these activities have some future hopes and impacts on the society and can be succeeded in Pakistan with their current position and direction? What do scholars think about future of interreligious dialogue in Pakistan? In this study, efforts are made to evaluate the interfaith dialogue movement in Pakistan from futuristic perspective in the light of Muslim-Christian scholarly views. The analytical and critical research methodology was adopted in this study with qualities approach. For data collection libraries, websites, journals, interviews and discussion methods were used.