Obstacles to Dialogue

1. Introduction
2. Michael Amaladoss’ Background; A call to dialogue
4. Meaning, goals and Three Faces of Interreligious Dialogue
5. Forms of Interreligious Dialogue

6. Obstacles to Dialogue
Amaladoss realizes that in implementing Interreligious Dialogue in an Asian context is not such an easy thing, it is difficult, indeed. He, then, mentions that prejudice, secularism, fundamentalism, communalism and stereotypes can be major hindrances to involvement in inter-religious encounter or dialogue in the Asian context.[28] Amaladoss highlights that Prejudice has its roots often in ignorance. He mentions the caste system in India as a good example of it. It seems that the caste system has come automatically from living in an exclusive society in their own world and in ignorance of the presence of other beliefs and other peoples.[29] The gap left by ignorance is filled by prejudice and it will be transmitted from generation to generation.

Secularism, on the other hand, is “an ideology which focuses on humanity and reason and ignores, if it does not deny, God and the transcendent, which are aspects of experience that religion believes in”[30]. One of the most common happens in secularist countries where religion loses its role and appears as a tendency to privatize religion. The emergence of globalization has carried tremendous impacts upon the life of Asian people. If not most, many of Asian people tend to wall themselves into “a new world”; a life of materialism and a life of consumerism. This “world” has successfully fortified them into the extreme of individualistic and secularist society.

Fundamentalism is a religious attitude understood as a narrow affirmation of the truth of one’s own beliefs. Fundamentalism tends to promote a state religion. This tendency is widespread throughout the world. In India , for instance, Hinduism dominates public life. Inter-religious dialogue has no space in the fundamentalist society.[31] In the fundamentalist world others religions tend to be regarded as of second class status, even the ‘enemy’.

Communalism, on the other hand, is a political attitude. Communalism believes that people who share the same religious beliefs also share the same economic and political interest[32]. The danger of this group is that it tends to regard other beliefs as enemies and the followers second class citizens. Tolerance or acceptance is far from praxis while nursing hatred and mistrusting becomes a menu of daily life.

Finally stereotyping is one of the obstacles to the Interreligious Dialogue according to Amaladoss. We tend to categorize others in terms of the group they belong to. The group itself is characterized as an out-group, which is opposed to an in-group (enemy syndrome) to which I myself belong and which gives me my social identity. The relationship between the groups is often conditioned by economic (material benefits) and political (power relations) circumstances. Such stereotyping can block communication and dialogue. When the stereotype is in place, Amaladoss presumes, concrete data about an individual are either ignored or seen as an exception.[33]

7. Theological Reflection and Conclusion
Bilbiography