Abstract:

In today’s religiously plural societies, it is critical that people from different religions live together peacefully and cooperate and collaborate with each other. For religious traditions, this reality poses several challenges, not the least of which is whether it is possible to maintain irreconcilable religious differences, such as core beliefs and fundamental doctrines, while coexisting harmoniously with other religions. This paper argues that, from a Muslim perspective, it is possible to maintain religious harmony and good relations in a religiously plural society while still maintaining fundamental religious differences. It argues that inclusivism essentially involves being positive, non-judgmental, and accepting of the religious ‘other’ and treating them with respect in accordance with their inherent human dignity. This way, exclusivist religious beliefs about God, the scriptures, life after death, and the validity of one’s religion can exist at the level of a believer’s conscience, but they are not necessarily conveyed in public in a way that damages relationships between members of different religions in contemporary societies. The paper argues that such an approach (holding exclusivist beliefs while adopting inclusivist attitudes towards the religious ‘other’) is possible for Muslims, and that there is significant support in Islam’s most important text, the Qur’ān, and among many prominent contemporary Muslim scholars for this approach. It also argues that exclusivist texts in the Qur’ān and theological positions that Muslims developed early on can be dealt with by adopting a contextualist approach to their interpretation.