Never Wholly Other: A Muslima Theology of Religious Pluralism

Description

How does the Qur'an depict the religious Other? Historically, this question has provoked extensive debate among Islamic scholars about the identity, nature, and status of such religious Others. Today, this debate assumes great importance because of the widening experience of religious plurality, which prompts inquiry into convergences and divergences in belief and practice as well as controversy over the appropriate forms of interaction among different religions. The persistence of religious violence also gives rise to difficult questions about the relationship between the depiction of religious Others, and intolerance and oppression. Scholars have traditionally accounted for the coexistence of religious similarity and difference by resorting either to models that depict religions as isolated entities or models that arrange religions in a static, evaluative hierarchy. In response to the limitations of this discourse, Jerusha Tanner Lamptey constructs an alternative conceptual and hermeneutical approach that draws insights from the work of Muslim women interpreters of the Qur'an, feminist theology, and semantic analysis. She employs this approach to reevaluate, reinterpret, and reenvision the Qur'anic discourse on religious difference. Through a close reading of the Qur'anic text, she distinguishes between two forms of religious difference: hierarchical and lateral. She goes on to explore the complex relationality that exists among Qur'anic concepts of hierarchical religious difference and to articulate a new, integrated model of religious pluralism. Using an interdisciplinary approach to confront existing Islamic scholarship, Lamptey's Never Wholly Other offers a new genre of theology. Cover Never Wholly Other Copyright Contents Acknowledgments Note on Transliteration, Translation, and Gendered Language Never Wholly Other Introduction The Qurʾān and the Religious Other Theology of Religions and Islamic Contributions Muslima Theology? Qurʾān Only? Overview of Chapters 1 Historical and Contemporary Approaches to Religious Otherness 1 Self and Other in Historical Islamic Discourse Rejecting the Other and Projecting the Self: Polemical and Apologetic Trends Delineations of Qurʾānic Difference: Exegetical and Juridical Trends Theocentric Oneness and Differentiated Multiplicity: Mystical and Sufi Trends Selves and Others 2 Sameness and Difference in Contemporary Islamic Approaches to Religious Diversity Prioritization of Sameness Simultaneous Affirmation of Sameness and Difference Prioritization of Difference Proximity and Otherness: The Prevailing Conception of Difference and Beyond Two Shortcomings 2 Conceptual and Hermeneutical Foundations of Muslima Theology 3 Contemporary Muslim Women Interpreters of the Qurʾān: Hermeneutical Approach and Conception of Difference Qurʾān-Centered Hermeneutical Approach (Re)Conception of Difference Forays into Religious Difference Trajectories of Analysis 4 From Sexual Difference to Religious Difference: Feminist Theological Approaches to Religious Difference Dialogue amid Diversity Theology of Religions: Feminist Theological Critiques and Contributions Insights and Extensions: Toward a Muslima Theology of Religious Pluralism 5 From Holistic Interpretation to Relational Hermeneutics: Toshihiko Izutsu’s Semantic Analysis of the Qurʾān Relational Meaning and the Semantic Weltanschauung: Toshihiko Izutsu’s Method of Analysis The Qurʾānic Weltanschauung: Conceptual Opposition and a Basic Moral Dichotomy Insights: Toward a Muslima Hermeneutic of Relationality 3 A Muslima Theology of Religious Pluralism 6 Lateral and Hierarchical Religious Difference in the Qurʾān Defining Characteristics of Hierarchical and Lateral Difference Hierarchical Religious Difference: The Semantic Field of Taqwā Lateral Religious Difference: The Semantic Field of Umma Umma and Reification? Taqwā and Denotative Stability? 7 Relational Mapping of the Semantic Field of Taqwā: Concepts of Hierarchical Religious Difference Recognition of and Attitude toward God Response to God’s Guidance Type and Nature of Actions Observations and Implications 8 Never Wholly Other: Sameness, Difference, and Relationality Creation and Theological Anthropology Creation and Revelation Revelation and Revelation Purpose of Lateral Religious Difference The Religious Other and the Qurʾān Notes Glossary of Arabic Terms Bibliography Index Verse Index