The dialogue between cultures and religions at national and international level started a long time before the contemporary discourse on the “clash of civilisations” was inititated. The city of Beirut tried to lead a so-called Christian- Muslim dialogue starting in the mid 60s of the 20th century. I myself was a somewhat critical observer and participant. At the beginning, the dialogue seemed to be a useful, progressive and critical exercise in broadening the horizon and understanding one-self by all the participating parties of Lebanon. At an early stage, however, I discovered that the opposite was true and criticised the dialogue for the hypocrisy, uselessness and backwardness that permeated it. The whole Muslim-Christian dialogue seemed to be in fact more of a prelude and preparation for the long-lasting civil war in Lebanon that was soon to start. By no means was it the beginning of a new era of Christian-Muslim communication. The war can certainly be viewed as a clear setback to religious and segregational disputes and fights reminiscent of the Middle Ages.

However, important lessons that are still relevant today can be learned from the way the dialogue was led which unfortunately proved to be unsuccessful. First of all, the question on the role of autonomous reason needs to be analysed in all activities. Neither the Muslim side nor the Christian side in Lebanon at the time was willing to allow for autonomous reason to play the role it deserved. Reason was not employed as a regulatory principle. It was not used for identifying the areas of consent and the areas of honest dissent. Overlapping areas, potential consensus and reconcilitation were however supposed to be found in the course of the dialogue. Either side maintained their claims based on faith instead and presented them as reasonable offers. Each party insisted on resolutely rejecting the possibility that they could be wrong in their own beliefs and positions.

It is worth mentioning at this point that all comparable attempts at an inner-Islamic dialogue failed such as various initiatives to reach a rapprochement of the different denominations in Islam (taqrib al-madhahib), i.e. Sunnites and Shiites. They already failed at the theoretical level before any practical measure was taken. The failure lay in the rejection of autonomous reason to be employed. The dialogue failed because the parties refused to stand on the realtively neutral ground of secular reason for even just a minute. From my perspective, this needs to be a lesson to be learned for any progressive Muslim agenda.