ভূমিকা

Shiavault - a Vault of Shia Islamic Books Intellectual Responses To Religious Pluralism Introduction Pluralism is in vogue. As the Bangladeshi newspaper Dainik Janakantha editorialized in June 5th, 2001, “…it is the age of achieving freedom. It is the age of singing songs of triumph of pluralism over authoritarianism.

It is the age of exception, the age of difference, and the age of proclaiming the victory of mankind and diversifying the sources of creativity.”[^1] Unfortunately, the current daunting reality does not endorse such a positive outlook. As I write, news has just come in of another suicide bombing in Iraq that killed two hundred people, leaving countless lives devastated, and further reducing any remaining element of trust in the country.

How are Iraqis to reconcile their own internal religious differences while dealing both with military intervention by a foreign power and a civil conflict? It seems that hopes for a pluralistic religious society in Iraq are fading away. Across the world, the paradigm of hope has been replaced by many sentiments of pessimism. With today’s challenges, is there a hope for the survival of religious pluralism?

In The Clash of Civilizations , Samuel Huntington states that the dominant characteristic of the post-Cold War global environment is violence between different ethnic and religious groups. In his thesis, Huntington argues that the primary axis of conflict in the future would be along cultural and religious lines. Many disagree with Huntington’s thesis that the world’s traditions are inherently and inevitably in conflict with each other.

However, the daily news headlines make it clear that far too much violence in our world is related to religious differences. On September 11th, 2001, the world witnessed a vicious attack on human civilization. The attacks in New York and Washington, D.C. struck at symbols of American prosperity and power. In turn, many people in America have identified the enemy as another symbol - a monolithic Islam diametrically opposed to the democratic West.

As a result, many people believe that Huntington’s thesis has become a true prophecy manifested in the clash of religions between Christianity and Islam. In response to the September 11th terrorist attacks, Europe, America and many other countries enacted anti-terror laws (i.e. the USA PATRIOT Act) that have made many Muslim men and women in these countries feel that they are viewed with apprehension and even serious suspicion.