ভূমিকা

Shiavault - a Vault of Shia Islamic Books Islamic Political Theory (Legislation): Volume 2 Third approach to the relativity of knowledge (relativity of religious knowledge) ==================================================================================== One of the types of relativism is the relativity of religious knowledge.

Some people say: “We also acknowledge that religion is immutable and absolute and that religious values are also consistent with the real, essential and permanent interests and corruptions, and we regard the reality of religion as absolute and fixed. However, we have no access to the real and absolute religion and we cannot establish connection with it. What is accessible to us and at our disposal is our knowledge or understanding of religion.

What we present to others as religion is actually our understanding or perception of religion, and others may possibly have their own understanding or perception of religion.

We recognize the essence of religion as fixed and absolute but we consider our understanding or knowledge of religion as alterable and relative, believing that one must not treat as absolute his knowledge or understanding of religion and impose his ideas upon others.” At this point, this question is raised: Is it possible for some of our religious understandings to be absolute yet accepted or not by everybody, and that there is no absolute understanding in the realm of religious knowledge, and any knowledge of every religious subject is relative or subjective?

As a result, it is possible that there is contradiction between two religious understandings and these two are in total opposition to each other. That is, a person totally believes in a religious narrative while another person totally rejects it, whereas the understanding and perception of religion of both is acceptable and credible!

This third approach on relativism which has been known as relativity of religious knowledge and understanding and whose exponents have labeled it as “the contraction and expansion of the path” has been advanced and promoted in our country for approximately the past two decades. Everyday, it is intensively and extensively discussed more in newspapers and magazines on the basis of which, it is shown that all people do not have equal understanding of religion.