Abstract
Race’s typology has been widely used outside of the Christian tradition; however, it has been constructed in the light of the epistemological and soteriological concerns raised by Christian approaches towards other religions. Even though different questions generate the Christian and Islamic theologies of religions, Muslim and non-Muslim scholars have used Race’s classification to present the Islamic theology of religions. This paper presents different usages of Race’s three-fold typology and shows that Race’s threefold classification is not fully applicable to the Islamic theology of religions. The inclusivist position in the Islamic theology of religions (or its application to them) seems to be the most problematic issue. This is not because no inclusivist theology exists in the Islamic theology of religions, but rather because some scholars emphasise soteriology when applying Race’s inclusivism to the Islamic theology of religions, whilst others take epistemological concerns into account. Unlike these scholars, this paper eventually offers that contemporary Muslim theologians offer two-sided arguments. The supersessionist theory (Islam is the only true religion that supersedes other religions) is the best way to distinguish between these positions. According to Knitter’s classification, this paper considers this theory as a form of exclusivism, which would be seen as the “Replacement Model”. Contemporary discourse on the Islamic response to religious pluralism takes place between exclusivists who believe that Islam is the only religion that has superseded other religions and pluralists who think the opposite.
Highlights
There have been diverse approaches towards other religions in the Christian West in the last two centuries
This inconvenience derives from the fact that there is no sharp distinction between what they would describe as inclusivist and pluralistic theologies in the Islamic theology of religions, in contrast to Christian theology
When the typology is transferred to the Islamic theology of religions, these scholars have tried to follow something equivalent in the Islamic theology of religions
Summary
There have been diverse approaches towards other religions in the Christian West in the last two centuries. Since the publication of Christians and Religious Pluralism in 1983, Alan Race has categorised diverse approaches to religious pluralism into three taxonomies: exclusivism, inclusivism, and pluralism Since his three-fold typology has become the standard typology used to picture the Christian theology of religions despite some critiques.. There have been relatively diverse responses to this question, fewer works have categorised these responses It seems that scholars have primarily used Race’s three-fold typology to explore different Islamic responses to religious others. After looking at the different usages of three-fold typologies, this paper will argue that scholars try to fit Islamic responses to religious pluralism into either Race’s typology or other three-fold typologies, it appears that there have been two main different positions within the Islamic theology of religions: exclusivism and pluralism. The primary reason for this is that there are some fundamental differences between the Christian and Islamic theologies of religions
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