Interreligious Dialogue from a Muslim Perspective

Abstract

Since the 1960s, Europe has experienced an increasing plurality of cultures and religions. In addition to entailing an enormous enrichment for society, this plurality has also presented a challenge for it as a whole. To use the opportunities offered by this cultural and religious plurality, there is, among other things, the necessity to confront the different cultures and religions and their varying – and to some extent contradictory – values and customs and to ‘integrate’ them into a community. This is not an easy undertaking because in addition to a recognition in principle and promotion of pluralism, common and binding basic values are also needed to be able to maintain a democratic and pluralist society (Sejdini, 2015c, 11– 17). In connection with this, religions are also challenged to contribute to a culture of the peaceful co-existence of various worldviews. Especially in times in which human life can be eliminated in the name of God, there is a need to counteract the latent suspicion that, because of their absolute truth claims and intolerance towards those of other faiths, monotheistic religions stand in the way of a pluralist society encompassing various worldviews (Assmann, 1998). Here such monocausal explanations of the phenomenon of violence mask the fact that religions are not “hermeneutically sealed off ... inner spaces” (Schmid, 2008) but are influenced by political, economic, cultural, and social factors. Therefore, such factors must also be kept in mind in interreligious dialogue so that it can yield results. In full awareness of the complex structure and ambivalent character of the phrase ‘interreligious dialogue’, this essay presents a Muslim perspective that is based of course on my Islamic theology and work in pedagogics. Accordingly, the decision to use the term ‘Muslim’ instead of ‘Islamic’ is programmatic for my subject-oriented and contextual approach. This assumes that it is not religions as monolithic blocks that engage in direct dialogue but people who live in a certain context. Moreover, the subject-oriented approach is also even supported by the religious sources, which, in relation to interreligious dialogue, contain partly even apparently contradictory statements that people articulate (Abu-Zaid, 2008). Following Radtke, it can be said that, in addition to cultures, religions do not speak either, even if some explain themselves to their speakers (Radtke, 2011). In connection with this, the fundamental tendencies in the Qur’an, the