Can we talk? Even the best-laid plans--and dialogues--can go awry. Lessons from an embarrassing event.

ON THIS CRISP, CLOUDLESS AFTERNOON I'M IN A ROOM full of some 60 fellow Catholics at Chicago's Navy Pier for a "Festival of Faith." The only obviously Muslim person among us is a young woman in her hijab--the traditional headscarf worn by Muslim women. Saba M. Baig had been asked to join me in facilitating an interreligious dialogue workshop titled "Understanding Islam."

We decided to begin by sharing our stories--Baig as a young New Jersey-born Muslim woman who teaches U.S. government and philosophy in high school, and I as a middle-aged Italian American Catholic who has spent the past 20 years studying and teaching Islam at the university level. Baig agreed to talk about both the fear and blessings of goodwill she had experienced as a U.S. Muslim after Sept. 11, 2001. As for me, I would briefly review the Second Vatican Council's teachings on interreligious dialogue. We thought this would invite the group into a spirit of respectful and mutually enlightening exchange.

Unfortunately we were wrong. As soon as we opened the floor for dialogue, participants started to grill Baig: "You claim Islam respects women, then why are more women being stoned for committing adultery than men?" "Doesn't the Qur'an say it's OK for Muslims to kill Jews and Christians?" "Why don't more Muslims condemn 9/11 and other terrorist acts?" And finally, "Why do Muslims want to conquer the world in the name of Islam and make all people Muslims?"

It seems to me there are at least two deeply flawed assumptions that these honest but combative and problematic questions about Islam--or any religion other than one's own--tend to have in common. The first is: When I spy something "wrong" with your religion, my perspective as an outsider is more objective-which is then confirmed in my mind if you cannot explain or defend the defect to my satisfaction. The second is: No religion worth having can have something wrong with it, therefore when I find something wrong with your religion, I've discovered one of the many reasons your religion is not worth having, and inversely, one of the many reasons mine is.

Our workshop was supposed to be an opportunity for Catholic-Muslim dialogue, but this opportunity was being squandered because we allowed Islamophobia to intrude. The only Muslim in a room full of Catholics was made to play a role no religious person should ever be made to play: apologist for what others--and maybe even you yourself--perceive to be wrong with your religion. One wonders how the questioners would feel if a room full of Muslims grilled them about the clergy sex-abuse scandal and what it might reveal about the "dangers of a priestly hierarchy" or the "unnaturatness of the discipline of celibacy."

At the time, I don't know what disturbed and embarrassed me more. Was it that we Catholics were so grossly betraying our Abrahamic commitment to hospitality against one of our sisters in Abraham? Or was it that this would be one of this Muslim's more memorable encounters with the church of Christ? In hindsight, what disturbs and embarrasses me the most is the role I played--or did not play--in all of this.

When I finally brought the grilling to a close, I ended up scolding the audience for not engaging in real dialogue. But however appropriate it felt, this was ultimately unfair because it was my responsibility to anticipate the possibility of the dialogue breaking down. I should have stressed how avoiding combativeness does not mean refraining from asking important questions, but only that we do so in a spirit of humility, openness, and friendship. I should have emphasized how important it would be that everything we say--especially to our guest--must be born out of the mutual love and respect that is the foundation for all authentically Christian and Muslim social interaction.

Two DAYS LATER BAIG AND I WERE BACK AT NAVY PIER FOR a second go-around with a different group of participants. This time I made sure to reflect on some of the do's and don'ts of dialogue. I even shared a bit of what had happened at the first session. This gave us all a chance to be more self-conscious of how important our mode of interaction is when we accept the difficult but rewarding challenges of interreligious dialogue.

I got the chance to learn from my mistakes, and we all got a chance to learn something valuable from a dialogue gone awry. God is good.

By SCOTT ALEXANDER, director of the Catholic-Muslim Studies Program at the Catholic Theological Union in Chicago.