The world speaks a language that is often characterized by power relations and domination. This language divides, separates, discriminates and oppresses peoples. There is, yet another language that people now long to speak. This is the language of dialogue. Here we are speaking of specific dialogue, an inter-religious dialogue where we come and meet as persons of faith and identified with a religious community. Inter-religious dialogue is relatively new in our contemporary world. There are no ready-made rules on how to conduct this kind of dialogue yet there are experiences that may guide and help us as we continue to journey on this unfamiliar and still largely un-charted road.

The first step is to take our pluralism seriously. We need to seriously experience our differences and similarities, as well.

Second is to be open to learn not only from each other but also to live with each other in tolerance. Concretely, it means our willingness to accept, to trust and to live together.

Third, is our commitment to guarantee the rights and dignity of every person regardless of faith, gender, culture and color within our society/community. The basis of this commitment is our belief that all peoples even though they belong to different religions, nations, etc. They all form ONE human family, created by the ONE and same God, living in the same world/community, and destined for a common end.

In the inter-religious dialogue there should be an honest and sincere openness to understand and grow in our perception of realities and the “other” and the willingness to act accordingly. Often times, we were schooled to define realties and the “other” on our terms and language. We engage in an inter-religious dialogue so that we can learn, grow and understand what my dialogue partner believes and cherishes - their fears and aspirations.

The communication and self-revelation take place in an environment of TRUST and genuine search for common grounds of fellowship while respecting our diversities and integrity of our faith traditions. Trust is NOT a universal element in human relations. It has to be slowly, patiently and sometimes painfully built through time.

Yes, we live amid many and diverse faiths, cultures and peoples. Though many and different, we need not be hostile nor indifferent to each other. In fact, these diversities invite us to make a shift in our paradigm from hostility to partnership; from indifference to involvement; and from being closed to being opened to one another.

This dialogical paradigm teaches us that notwithstanding our differences and diversities we all live on this earth, in fact, on this piece of land. The bottom line is the affirmation that we are together in the journey through life. For better or worse, we are neighbors and we hope and believe that as neighbors, we can be partners in building not only a better world but also a friendlier community where you and I, and our children live as brothers and sisters.

The common grounds are discovered in our faith commitments resulting from our critique of the earth and the relationships between and among peoples, communities and nations. Partners in dialogue become aware of being “stakeholders” as well as participants in the drama and tragedies of communities that we are. In other circle, this level of dialogue is called “dialogue of action”.

Muslim and Christian collaboration is a major issue and concern as we prepare for a new round of talks between the GRP and the MILF. This has been made more complex by the decision of the Philippine Supreme Court on the unconstitutionality of the Memorandum of Agreement on Ancestral Domain or MOA AD. The debates post MOA AD has once again re-ignited the historical relations that are, more often, marked by rivalry and conflict, Muslim and Christian collaboration has become a more problematic task in our age. Biases and prejudices are as strong as ever if not stronger. Often our perception of each other is shaped more by historical memory and the mass media than actual knowledge and experience.

Today, the rise of Islamic fundamentalism is a single factor that seems to block Muslim and Christian collaboration. Yet, the new wave of religious fundamentalism is not a monopoly of Islam. Our secular humankind understands this new religious awakening in a very narrow sense. Various religious revivalist movements in Islam as well as in Christianity or in other religious traditions are, often, lumped together under a generic label of religious fundamentalism. This is interpreted as a reaction to the present secular realities.

In Islam, religious revivalist movement is much wider and broader. Muslims themselves like their Christian counterparts do not accept the label fundamentalism to describe the present religious re-awakening. For one thing, religious re-awakening differs from country to country. In fact, it is as complex as the very relations between Muslims and Christians.

As in Christian re-awakening movement, the Islamic one is a desire and the determination to a “return” to the perceived basics of the religious tradition. There are those who are inspired by the ancient religious grandeur and want to replicate in our present time the institution and praxis of the so-called “golden era”. On the other hand, there are those who attempt to recapture the dynamism of religion and reconcile it with the exigencies of a modern and technological era and the condition of globalization in which old rules cannot possibly remain unaltered. Then there are those who embrace the new wave religious re-awakening to oppose the increasing secularizing trends of the contemporary society.

There are four basic common characteristics of the current religious revivalism. First, there is the accepted blueprint of societal as well as individual life. God gives this blueprint in the revelation. The blueprint is completed and/or nearing completion. The members of the movement are called upon to either re-produce or hasten the realization of the said blueprint in our times.

Second is the fact that religious revivalism is a reaction to the contemporary secularizing trends that are perceived as menace to the faith of the individuals and the community. The adherents of this movement believe that this new “Modernism” and the perceived moral and social “corruption” threaten to destroy the very fiber of the traditional mooring of the individuals and societies. Revivalism, in this sense, is a strong reaction to the present social and moral order that is perceived as a new “Paganism”.

Third, religious revivalism gives answer to individual’s needs for healing and identity. No doubt, the woundedness and injustice, particularly the structural violence that reduces the greater number of people to poverty, seeks healing and redress. The religious re-awakening movements focus on this individual and communal “brokenness” and the necessity of healing by way of strict adherence to the imperatives of faith as given in “illo tempore”. In the same vein, the growing alienation of people in our contemporary world surfaces the need for identity and belonging where lines and parameters are clearly defined and delineated. Often, these parameters are also God-given thus cannot be changed or modified at all times. The religious revival movements give “security” and identity as well as belonging to individuals and groups who are considered “saved” or “redeemed” constituting the new “Holy Nation”.

Fourth, the new revivalism is seen as an alternative vis-à-vis the growing arrogance of the state to think and decide for all. The imposition of a uniform economic and social order in this era of globalization threatens to destroy the specific character of peoples, nation and individuals. The new revivalist movements take this power from the state and business and restore it to God.

There is, today, a strong belief that the new surge of religious revivalism in the world is the single factor that erodes the inter-religious dialogue and collaboration that have gained currency in the post Vatican II era. Religious re-awakening both in Islam and Christianity as in other religions has taken an “exclusivist” form that views all others as “foreign” bodies and source of contamination and defilement.

The new religious revivalism has brought to the fore the lingering resentment and injustices of our past relationships. They are deeply rooted in the psyche of Muslim-Christian encounters. With few exceptions, there was really no mutual openness between Muslims and Christians but a steady accumulation of biases and prejudices. These developed a sort of “exclusivism” of culture and identity drawing all things into a calculated “otherness” and reciprocity.

This “exclusivist” paradigm is familiar enough and part of our present problem. Often, it exercises tyranny over our spirits. It has, in fact, produced a culture and a habit of suspicion and confrontation that make inter-religious collaboration and dialogue, truly, a very difficult task. It requires a commitment and determination to steadily school ourselves to resist and reject our habit of preferring suspicion to trust; our instinct to prefer the familiar confrontation to a new relationship of partnership in the world that is in difficult transition.