In accordance with our primary aim expressed in the introduction, in this study we have pursued Christian dialogue concerns from the Second Vatican Council [1962-1965] to the present day. We have studied both the official views of the main Christian Churches—the Roman Catholic Church and the World Council of Churches—and the views of individual thinkers on such particular issues as the question of the status of the Qur’an and the Prophet Muhammad, and the person of Jesus. Generally speaking, throughout our study we have witnessed that the Christian attitude towards people of other faiths in general and Muslims in particular, both officially and individually, has undergone fundamental shifts in the last three decades. The former one-way street has become open to two-way traffic, and the one-sided monologues have been supplemented with a readiness to listen and understand.

In this conclusion, we will reflect upon the following matters from the point of view of Christian-Muslim dialogue. Firstly, we will elaborate the positive developments in the Christian dialogue initiatives. Secondly, we will consider the shortcomings of these developments. Thirdly, we will discuss the new opportunities which these developments have created. And finally, we will conclude our study by giving a Muslim response to these developments.

Our first chapter has revealed that the promulgation of the epoch-making document Nostra Aetate [196- ]of the Second Vatican Council opened a new period in the Roman Catholic Church’s relationship with Muslims. After fourteen hundred years of condemnation and rejection, Islam began to be seen as a religious entity which Christians should respect and with which Christians should enter into dialogue. Also, this Council stimulated Church authorities to concentrate upon the common points between Christians and Muslims more than their differences, that both worship the same God, both belong to the same family of Abraham in terms of their faith, both share the same common humanity. The other significant side of the teaching of the Second Vatican Council is that it brought to an end the age-old Catholic axiom of Extra Ecclesiam Nulla Salus by explicitly acknowledging the possibility of salvation for non-Christians in general and Muslims in particular.

As our second chapter shows, through its special dialogue agency which was set up during the Council, the Roman Catholic Church authorities tried to promote this new positive and dialogical relationship with Muslims. In doing so, the authorities of this agency first of all determined its policy and prepared its members for dialogue with Muslims. They organised regional and international dialogue meetings with Muslims and published some significant documents to create a suitable environment for better relations. Also, both Pope Paul VI and John Paul II have tried to urge Christians to promote Christian-Muslim dialogue by citing the Second Vatican Council’s statements in their encyclicals and visiting Muslim countries and hosting Muslim delegations in the Vatican, regarding Muslims as brothers and sisters of Christians.

Our examination of all these events has demonstrated that the most significant side is their encouragement of Christians to continue to have a dialogical attitude towards Muslims in every circumstance. The great advantage of this is that even when difficulties and tensions arise, Christians are encouraged to look for positive solutions rather than retreating into the old ways of condemnation and hatred.

As has been observed in the third chapter, following in the footsteps of the conciliar teaching of the Roman Catholic Church, the WCC in turn at its Kandy consultation [1967] adopted the dialogical attitude as a new basis for Christian relationship with people of other faiths. After the Kandy meeting, the personnel of the WCC began to organise multilateral dialogue meetings with people of other faiths in order to experience dialogue and discuss the problems as well as the successes that such dialogue would bring. Like the authorities of the Roman Catholic Church, they established a dialogue subunit [DFI] to promote the WCC’s relationship with people of other faiths. In this way, the personnel of DFI organised bilateral and multilateral dialogue meetings in order to seek how both Christians and people of other faiths can live together peacefully in religiously pluralistic societies.

After twenty years of dialogue experiences, the personnel of the DFI published a land mark document called Guidelines on Dialogue [1979] in order to help the member churches of the WCC in their relationship with people of other faiths. The most significant contribution of this document was that by its promulgation as an official statement of the WCC, non-Catholic Christians obtained an official document to guide their relationship with people of other faiths.

The most significant point of the WCC’s dialogue activities is their stress that dialogue should be established on common practical and social issues, not theological questions. In the light of this, the personnel of the WCC have considered dialogue with people of other faiths as a tool to solve common problems and to promote peace, justice, and good will regionally and worldwide.

In short, our examination of the official teachings of the Roman Catholic Church and the WCC demonstrate that the traditional narrow exclusivism has largely disappeared from the agenda of these mainstream churches and has left in its place a more open attitude towards people of other faiths in order to establish a better world in which both Christians and non-Christians can live peacefully.

The second part of our study demonstrates how, differently from the institutional dialogue events of the major Christian Churches, individual scholars and theologians have dealt with crucial theological questions. In doing so, their face-to-face relations with Muslims have stimulated them to reconsider the status of the Qur’an, the prophethood of Muhammad and the person of Jesus Christ for a genuine dialogue. Our examination of contemporary Christian evaluations of the status of the Qur’an and the Prophet Muhammad in Chapters Four and Five has shown that entering into dialogue with Muslims has led Christians to move away from former polemical approaches to the Qur’an and the Prophet Muhammad to a more sympathetic and positive understanding. In doing so, all the scholars whose views have been considered in these chapters have tried to make theological room for the Qur’an and the Prophet Muhammad within the Christian theology of religion. In so doing, they emphasized that the Qur’an is no longer considered as a product of Muhammad’s own thinking but as God’s word which came to him from beyond; Muhammad is regarded no longer as only a religious and political genius, but as a prophet along the lines of the great Old Testament prophets. Also, except Cragg and Kerr, all our thinkers implied that if Christians want to understand the nature of the Qur’an and the phenomenon of Muhammad for a genuine dialogue with Muslims, they need to observe the contribution of the Qur’anic teaching to the lives of Muslims. In other words, what these thinkers suggest is that instead of discussing whether the Qur’an was an inspiration from God or whether the Prophet Muhammad was inspired by God, it is necessary to observe whether the Qur’an or the Prophet Muhammad has an inspiring influence upon Muslims. This seems to be a very positive development, since it calls non-Muslims not to try to evaluate Islam a priori in the light of their own religious traditions.

Some of our thinkers—Küng and Kerr—consider the Prophet Muhammad and his teaching a "prophetic corrective" and "as a witness for Jesus" for Christians in the sense that the teaching of the Prophet Muhammad can help Christians to reconsider their understanding of Jesus. The positive side of this argument is that it leads Christians not to fear the Qur’an and the Prophet Muhammad, but to consider them seriously in order to benefit from them.

As has been observed in Chapter Six, what Christians experience in the dialogical relationship may affect the way in which they understand their faith. Parallel to the above developments, Christian thinkers have attempted to reconsider their traditional beliefs about the person of Jesus. They have frequently argued for abandoning the exclusivist understanding of the status of Jesus which holds him as the absolute saviour apart from whom there is simply no salvation. The most significant implication of this chapter is if Christians consider Jesus as the decisive and normative revelation of God for those who have chosen to follow and not in any universal sense, they can acknowledge that Muslims may obtain salvation by following the Qur’an and the Prophet Muhammad.

In the light of all the above points, we may say that the second part of our thesis clearly demonstrates that individual thinkers have gone beyond the official teaching of the Roman Catholic Church and the WCC. Instead of focusing their attention on Muslims as people and not on their faith, Islam, and its phenomenon, they have attempted to accord Islam as a religion a divine origin. In doing so, they imply that Muslims can attain salvation by following the Qur’an and the teaching of the Prophet Muhammad, just as Christians can attain it through Jesus Christ. In fact, this conclusion is supported in Chapter Six where it is shown that Küng, among others, considers the Qur’an as the decisive and regulative norm for Muslims, just as Jesus is for Christians.

In short, all the above positive developments indicate that Christian-Muslim dialogue is no longer a luxury but a theological necessity for a better world in which both Christian and Muslims can live together peacefully. For that reason, what Christians and Muslims need to do is to show a full commitment to their own faith and mediators, and yet at the same time an openness towards the other faiths and mediators, in the sense of acknowledging that God has made himself known and has made salvation available through that faith and mediator as well.

Our research has demonstrated that besides the above positive developments there are also a number of shortcomings in the contemporary Western Christian interest in dialogue with Islam. Broadly speaking, as the first part of our study has revealed, the dialogical attitude of the Roman Catholic Church and the WCC towards non-Christians in general and Muslims in particular was frequently presented as a means of evangelism in situations where direct proclamation of the Gospel message was no longer possible. So, both the Catholic Church and the WCC in their official pronouncements have continued to espouse the view that dialogue is and should remain a tool for proclamation, or at least of preparing the way for evangelism. By doing this, it has been implied that interreligious dialogue is valued only for its potential usefulness in fulfilling evangelisation. It was also emphasised that non-Christian religions are fulfilled or perfected in Jesus and Christianity, because what they have is the partial reflection of the exhaustive Christian revelation. This means that without the Christian faith, non-Christian religions are incapable of leading their followers to salvation.

Within this general context, the most significant shortcoming of the official teaching of the Roman Catholic Church and the WCC is that in their official pronouncements both of them have spoken about Muslims, rather than their faith Islam. This implies that Christians want to dialogue with Muslim men and women without acknowledging their faith. In other words, they want to dialogue with Muslims as individuals, not as followers of a particular faith. Because of this point, neither of them have tried to make theological room for the most significant elements of the Islamic faith, namely, the Qur’an and the Prophet Muhammad. In connection with this shortcoming, neither the Catholic Church nor the WCC has considered Islam as a means of salvation. For, according to them, what Islam has as truth and holiness is the partial reflection of the exhaustive Christian truth which was revealed in Jesus Christ.

Our examination of post-Vatican II developments in Chapter Two has demonstrated that although the authorities of the Catholic Church have struggled to promote Christian-Muslim dialogue as we have indicated above, in recent statements of Pope Paul II and the documents of the Pontifical Council there are implications that some of the Catholic authorities want to go back to the pre-Vatican II period in which good Muslims were regarded as anonymous Christians or as those who had an implicit faith in the Church.

As the second part of our study demonstrated, the most significant shortcoming of the individual thinkers’ views on the Qur’an, the Prophet Muhammad and the Person of Jesus is that none of them has taken into account seriously the faith of sincere believers while dealing with these phenomenan. Chapters Four and Five have shown that some of the thinkers gave the impression that Muslims have misunderstood the status of the Qur’an and the nature of the prophethood of Muhammad. In so doing, these scholars have subjected the Qur’an and the Prophet Muhammad to their own understanding of the revelation and prophethood and tried to teach Muslims how they need to understand the nature of the Qur’anic revelation and the prophethood of Muhammad. In the same vein, as our Chapter Six indicates, Hick and Knitter implied that for two thousand years millions of Christians were misguided in holding the traditional Christian perception of the person of Jesus. This sort of approach explicitly underestimates the faith of those who observe their prayer and worship through their traditional beliefs about the Qur’an, the Prophet Muhammad and the Person of Jesus.

In short, all these shortcomings have demonstrated that although Christian-Muslim dialogue has come a long way in the last thirty-five years, there is still a double standard in Christians’ evaluation of Muslims and their faith. For, as our research implies, both official bodies and individual thinkers have subjected Muslims and their faith to a completely different set of standards and criteria than they subjected their faith. Also, as we have observed in Chapter Two, there is a double standard in Pope Paul VI and John Paul II’s views about Muslims. For example, on the one hand, when they have spoken to Muslims, they seem to go beyond the teaching of Vatican II by calling Muslims as brothers and sisters of Christians and praising their worship on every occasion. On the other hand, when they addressed Christian audiences, they insisted on the necessity of evangelisation of Muslims and proclamation of the Gospel message to them, because according to them there is only one way to salvation and that it is the Christian way, namely, Jesus Christ.

Our study of contemporary Christian concerns on dialogue presents new opportunities to both Muslims and Christians for a genuine and fruitful dialogue. Firstly, after the epoch-making teaching of the Second Vatican Council, although there were some roadblocks for a genuine Christian-Muslim dialogue, it seems that there will be no giving up of dialogue. For, as the prolific Catholic theologian Küng rightly maintains, world peace depends on peace between religions, and peace between religions can only be possible through dialogue.

Secondly, dialogue is not only used to find reasons for respecting others but also tries to know and appreciate them as they are, not as we want to see them. This means that what we need for a genuine dialogue is to understand our dialogue partners from within as they understand themselves, and to acquire their horizons, perspective’s and sensibilities so as to be able to see and experience the world from that perspective. For instance, if Christians want to understand the faith of Muslims or Muslims want to understand the faith of Christians, they must not look at what they might call Islam or Christianity, but they must look at the world, so far as possible, through Muslim or Christian eyes.

Thirdly, dialogue can be used not only as a tool to get to know others, but as an opportunity to learn from them so as to transform and expand ourselves. As our research demonstrates, while, on the one hand, Christians use the Qur’an and the Prophet Muhammad as a "prophetic corrective" to revise their understanding of the person of Jesus anew, on the other hand, Muslims can benefit from Christians to understand and explain the nature of the Qur’an in accordance with the needs of our present circumstances. This means that both Christians and Muslims should be open to new developments and to each other’s interpretation of their religious figures in order to fulfil the need for mutual learning.

Fourthly, our research indicates that for a genuine and fruitful dialogue we need to abandon all kinds of tools which seem to impose our own religious particularity on others or try to convert others to our faith. Instead we should assume mutual witnessing. This means that in the dialogue process we should share our own good news with others, as well as being ready to share their good news. So, it seems that what the official dialogue agencies should do is to encourage their members to share their own good news, their own particularities and their own distinctive elements with others, as well as being ready to share the other’s ones with full respect. By doing this, it will be possible to correct the limited perceptions of each sides, and so arrive eventually at a truer knowledge and experience of divine transcendence than each side’s religious tradition could achieve on its own.

Fifthly, the second part of our study reveals that there is a tendency that what we need as Muslims and Christians in the dialogue process is not to make dogmatic and absolute claims about our own particularities, but to try to live and show their contribution to our lives. For example, in the dialogue process between Christians and Muslims what Christians should do is not to make absolute and exclusive claims about the uniqueness and finality of Jesus Christ, but try to follow his way; and what Muslims should do is not prove the finality, uniqueness and superiority of the Qur’an and the Prophet Muhammad to others, but to apply the Qur’anic message to their lives and follow the Prophet Muhammad. Briefly, what we need to do in the dialogue process is not to announce the superiority of our religious figures, but to live and apply their messages to our lives. This means that instead of making dogmatic claims about our faiths, we need to prove their quality in practice. In Knitter’s words, we should give priority to orthopraxy more than orthodoxy in the dialogue process.

Connected with this point, our research has demonstrated that a relativistic approach to one’s own beliefs seems to contribute to the development of Christian-Muslim understanding more than the other approaches. For this approach keeps the balance between positive appreciation of each other’s faiths and our commitment which comes to us in our own particular beliefs. With regard to Christian-Muslim dialogue, the benefit of this approach is that it leads the Christian dialogue partner to see the Qur’an as the Word of God for Muslims, while holding Jesus as God’s normative and regulative Word for Christians.

Sixthly, as our research has shown us, there is a tendency in the contemporary Christian interest in interfaith dialogue for the mission policy of the Church to change from trying to convert non-Christian dialogue partners to the Christian faith to the more profound conversion of each dialogue partner to God. With regard to the Christian-Muslim dialogue, this point seems to be a natural result of the teaching of the Second Vatican Council, since, as has been observed in Chapter One, the Roman Catholics explicitly acknowledge that Christians and Muslims worship the same God. If this is the case, then it seems that the traditional Christian understanding of mission and the Islamic understanding of da’wah would move away from trying to convert the other to their own faith to mutual transformation towards the Transcendent Reality.

As has been pointed out, our study of contemporary Christian dialogue initiatives demonstrates that there have occurred epoch-making changes in Christian thinking about Muslims and their faith, Islam, on both official and individual levels. In concluding our study, we would like to hint at how Muslims need to respond to these changes to keep them going for a genuine and fruitful dialogue between Christians and Muslims which depends on mutual understanding and respect. For the future of Christian-Muslim dialogue depends on Muslims’ response to the Christian concerns.

First of all, as Muslims, we need to establish an official agency, like the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue of the Catholic Church and the Office on Inter-Religious Relations of the WCC, to carry out dialogue with Christians on behalf of the whole Muslim world.

Secondly, this dialogue agency should do more and more research on Christian faith and Christian-Muslim dialogue to produce experts and to get to know Christian dialogue partners closely.

Thirdly, this official dialogue agency also needs to publish a set of guidelines for dialogue between Muslims and non-Muslims in general and Christians in particular, as did the Catholic Church and the WCC, to help Muslims in their relationship to people of other faiths.

Fourthly, individual Muslim thinkers should develop a theology of interfaith relations that regards religious pluralism as a divinely ordained system of human co-existence. In order to do this, experts on interfaith dialogue should re-read the related Qur’anic materials in the light of multi-faith context by investigating them with new meanings and nuances.

Lastly, it is a future hope that Christians and Muslims will see their common interests and help one another in order to further them; it is the hope of this research to increase understanding and respect between these related faiths.