Introduction: Islam, Muslims, and Religious Pluralism: Concepts, Scope and Limits

This paper overviews the meanings of especially religious pluralism in the Islamic intellectual and political tradition, past and present, with reference to some major scholarly works in tafsīr, theology, and philosophy. First, before highlighting the importance of pluralism in modern studies of religion, from both historical and theological perspectives, brief reference to some classical “Islamic” texts on inter-and-intra comparative religions will be mentioned, not only to show that comparative religions and religious pluralism as scholarly disciplines are not inexistent in the tradition, but most importantly to show that religious pluralism could flourish in premodern times even when the episteme was dominantly “religious” - to use the terms here with reservations. The point here is that the plurality of interpreting one tradition, and the neutral or biased interpretations of other traditions, is a confirmation of religious pluralism, however problematic this confirmation might be in the political or theological spheres. Second, with reference to a few recent works in the field of “Islamic” intellectual history, tentative definitions on what Islam, Islamic, plurality, pluralism, and pluralization mean will be introduced. Third, examples of how pluralism is examined in contemporary Islamic thought are provided.