Abstract

What can literary interfaith dialogues teach us about real interfaith dialogue? Some would say: Nothing, they are only texts and they omit central elements of a real dialogue like the corporal presence of the speakers, their gestures and facial expressions, the orality of the discourses, the inter-subjectivity. Even if this argument is to a certain extent justifiable, it would be interesting to try another kind of reading of the texts, a phenomenological reading which tries to let appear the persons in dialogue, and perhaps even more: the appearance of the divine reality beyond the human concepts which are used in the controversy and bound to a certain theological system. By this phenomenological reading the reader himself becomes involved in the dialogue and bears a responsibility for his development. Keywords: Theory of dialogue, Interfaith dialogue, Christian-Muslim Encounter, Phenomenology, Inter-subjectivity, Otherness, Transcendence, Ethics, Theology.