Editing Seyyed Hossein Nasr (section)

====Interreligious dialogue====

According to [[Jane Idleman Smith|Jane I. Smith]], Nasr is "one of the most visible partners" of Islamic-Christian dialogue thanks to "his training in Christian theology and philosophy, combined with his remarkable knowledge of all Islamic sciences".{{sfn|Smith|2003 |p=15}}

Nasr points out that ordinary believers consider their religion to be ''the'' religion.{{sfn|The Essential Seyyed Hossein Nasr|2007 |p=10}} Injunctions such as: "I am the way, the truth, the life" ([[Jesus]]) or "No one sees God unless he has seen me" ([[Mohammed]]),{{sfn|The Essential Seyyed Hossein Nasr|2007 |p=8}} necessarily lead, for these same believers, to the certainty of the pre-eminence of their own religion, a conviction that could lead to the refusal to consider other religions as valid.{{sfn|The Essential Seyyed Hossein Nasr|2007 |p=10}} This refusal, for Nasr, can be considered as legitimate since it stems from revelation, therefore from God;{{sfn|Jahanbegloo|2010 |p=290}} God wants to "save souls", he does not ask the believer to deal with "[[comparative religion]]" nor to accept the validity of other revelations.{{sfn|The Essential Seyyed Hossein Nasr|2007 |p=10}} In a traditional world, such exclusivism presented no hindrance,{{sfn|The Essential Seyyed Hossein Nasr|2007 |p=10}} but in today's world, the mixing of populations calls many believers to question the value of the religions they encounter daily.{{sfn|The Essential Seyyed Hossein Nasr|2007 |p=4}}

Religion as it is seen in the world, says Nasr, "comes from the wedding between a Divine Norm and a human collectivity destined providentially to receive the imprint of that Norm." Thus, "racial, ethnic and cultural differences" constitute "one of the causes for multiplicity" of religions, "but religion itself cannot be reduced to its terrestrial embodiment".{{sfn|The Need for a Sacred Science|1993 |p=29-30}} For Nasr, there is only one truth and it necessarily manifests itself in "all the different authentic religious universes, otherwise God would not be merciful and just".{{sfn|Jahanbegloo|2010 |p=291}} But it is not, according to Nasr, the exoteric level, that of divergences, which allows access to a true understanding and acceptance of other religions;{{sfn|Jahanbegloo|2010 |p=290}}{{sfn|The Need for a Sacred Science|1993 |p=31}} only esotericism, which transcends the formal dimensions of religions, allows, according to him, uncompromising adherence to the authenticity of all revelations,{{sfn|Jahanbegloo|2010 |p=290}} by recognizing in them a supra-formal unity which resolves these very differences.{{sfn|The Need for a Sacred Science|1993 |p=31}}

Nasr actively participates in the dialogue between Christians and Muslims. In 2008, he was the main Muslim speaker, opposite [[Benedict XVI]], at the first Catholic-Muslim Forum organized by the [[Holy See|Vatican]].{{sfn|Lumbard|2013 |p=178}} For Nasr, "one of the reasons why it is so difficult to have a deep religious dialogue today" with Christians, is due – besides their conviction "that there is no salvation outside the Church"{{sfn|Jahanbegloo|2010 |p=297}}{{efn|Exclusivism alien to Islam, "for the Quran asserts clearly that people who do good works and have faith will be rewarded for their actions and will be saved, but does not say that this is true for only Muslims. There are some exclusivist and short-sighted Muslims today who believe that anyone who is not a Muslim is an infidel and will go therefore to hell, but that is not the traditional Islamic doctrine and goes against the text of the Quran". Interview in ''In Search of the Sacred'', 2010, p. 292. Nasr refers here, among others, to Quran 2:62: "Indeed the faithful, the Jews, the Christians, and the Sabaeans, those of them who have faith in God and the Last Day and act righteously, they shall have their reward near their Lord, and they will have no fear, nor will they grieve".}} – to the absence of an "esoteric dimension, interior [...], mystical", which centuries of secularism have stifled. For Islam, which is not "theologically threatened by the presence of other religions in the same way that Christianity is",{{sfn|Jahanbegloo|2010 |p=291}} the influence of secularism occurred much later than in the West, and Sufism, which is its interior dimension, continues to inspire "the most profound doctrines that have been formulated concerning the plurality of religions and the relationship between them".{{sfn|Jahanbegloo|2010 |p=290-291}}

For Nasr, as Jahanbegloo emphasizes, dialogue is "not only a pursuit of truth, but also a challenge to spiritual responsibility" of each religion to try to "heal the wounds of the present-day secularized world" in which we live.{{sfn|Jahanbegloo|2010 |p=xiii–xiv}}