Future Hopes of Interfaith Dialogue in Pakistani Context (Analysis of Dialogue in the Light of Muslim-Christian Scholarly Views)

In contemporary era, when world has become a global village, the nations, faiths and communities are more in need of better relationship, tolerance and peace than 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 CSC 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 reservations and concerns towards modern interfaith dialogue movement due to some valid reasons. For the collection of material, different ways have been used, such as, libraries, books, websites, national and international journals and interviews of different prominent Muslims and non-Muslims personalities. As well as, the secondary sources have been applied somewhere. 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 and say about this core activity named as inter-religious dialogue? In this study, efforts are made to evaluate future hopes of interfaith dialogue in Pakistani context in the light of Muslim-Christian scholarly views.