Islāmic Perspective of Inter-Religious Dialogue: A Study of Faith Based Reconciliation

This paper intends to discuss the inter-religious dialogue and the Prophet’s engagement with the ‘Other’. Both dialogue and faith-based reconciliation provide a way to mankind by which the world will become peaceful place to live. In this violence torn world, reconciliation on the basis of faith is needed, so that unity may be created out of diversity. This paper argues that interfaith dialogical theory profits from a deep understanding of moral psychology and social learning theory. The paper highlights that reconciliation belongs to Abrahamic legacy, and also focuses on how Islam established and come up with advanced civilizations characterized by relatively harmonious co-existence between Muslims, Christians and Jews. It is through reconciliation that we regain our humanity. To work for reconciliation is to live and to show others what their humanity is. The paper also shed light on faith-based reconciliation in its Islamic perspective. It is this context the present paper has been drafted.

The Civil Society-Democracy Co-Relationship: A Comparative Analysis of Turkey and Pakistan.

The Civil Society (C.S) in Pakistan though has developed over the years and gained vibrancy and strength to some extent. But it could not achieve much success as compared to its counterpart in Turkey. This research study involved primary as well as secondary sources as a part of this exploration.The methodology used in this study is a mixture of Quantitative and Qualitative Methods and mostly used traditional historical approach. Sampling involved people from different sections of C.S comprising of lawyers, teachers, parliamentarians and students regarding relationship and impact of civil society on democratization in Pakistan and Turkey. This is a pioneer study to use the Liberal Democratic Model as the frame work for addressing the subject. Liberal Democracy is practiced in most of the countries of the world. Its‟ important elements are: representative democracy, electoral choice and competition. There is a clear division between the C.S and the state. One to one interviews have been conducted from different people belonging to different areas in Pakistan. After analysis of the data the themes were presented to the participants for them to verify or refute. According to the researcher incompetent and corrupt leadership along with lack of influential middle class are responsible for a weak and fragmented civil society.In case of Turkey the civil society was also fragmented and weak but there has been a shift from ideologically centred activity towards issue oriented activity and assistance from external actors. By examining different reasons why civil society in Pakistan has not been able to achieve the level of democratization and success as compared to that achieved in Turkey, viable solutions and suggestions to improve the situation have been proposed.