24. How can Muslims learn to do intellectual exchange?

It was said for the second caliph Umar that “he used to learn from everyone.” But in order to enable ourselves to undertake such an intellectual exchange, we first need to understand the difference between ‘dialogue’ and ‘debate’. I was once in America where a ‘Trilogue’ was organized between Muslims, Christians and Jews. I was invited to this and saw that Christians and Jews spoke scientifically but every Muslim had become a “debater”. The Jews and Christians used to put up their word in the form of a dialogue.

‘To learn from everyone’ meant that Caliph Umar, in spite of being a very learned man himself, used to put himself in a position of intellectual inferiority in front of others. Only when one puts himself in this position do they develop a spirit of mutual learning. They open their minds to more knowledge and intellectual exchange. But for this the first step is to disown the culture of debate completely.