Dialogue replacing polemic with Muslims is a recent scholarly innovation.

Evidence

One particular way in which he can benefit from the new scholarship is in getting to see Islamic matters from the Islamic point of view. This is possible both by the means of modern scholarship and also by simply conversing frankly, if discreetly, with Muslims; but the power to be discreet and to exchange information reciprocally is one that we seem only to have acquired recently; previously converse was intended to lead to controversy, and not to mutual information. — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 1736