Online research in philosophy

Modern science provides the philosophy of religion with new perspectives and bodies of evidence for researching religion. Anthropology, for example, is helpful when we consider the relation of language and religion, and recent research in the philosophy of religion has been occupied with problems created by the distinctively religious uses of language. Language and action based on the assumptions of Western culture could, however, be obstacles to grasping the essence of the faith in other contexts. I argue that methodological pluralism should be employed by philosophers, theologians, and writers, because human and religious experience is irremediably pluralistic.

Recent controversies involving Islamic family law in the context of liberal jurisdictions (as exemplified in the Shari’a arbitration controversy of Ontario, Canada) have raised fundamental questions regarding the nature of family law in a liberal jurisdiction and the place of Islamic religious and legal commitments in such a jurisdiction. In this chapter, which is part of a book dedicated to discussing the question of family law pluralism in liberal states, the author argues that orthodox Muslims would prefer a policy of family law pluralism that is derived from a liberal family law rather than a system of family law pluralism that would give religious bodies greater authority. Working with a Rawlsian conception of the role of the family within political liberalism, the author argues that orthodox Muslims could support this version of family law because it creates a space for private ordering within the family that is sufficient for robust manifestations of Islamic family life that are also consistent with liberalism, and most importantly, does not require Muslims to endorse what would be, from their perspective, metaphysically controversial conceptions of marriage, such as the norm of lifelong marriage. The chapter describes how various Islamic ethical and legal doctrines give rise to and support a system of family law pluralism which, although different from the pluralism of liberalism, creates the possibility for overlap between authentically Islamic doctrines and liberal ones. The author then offers examples of the salient historical differences in Muslim understandings of family law by comparing two distinct Sunni Muslim systems of substantive law: the Hanafî and the Mâlikî. The author also describes the tension that exists between the values of Islamic law as a legal system and traditionalist Islamic religious discourse: the former protects and vindicates the individual rights of the parties to the marriage contract while the latter promotes an ethic of sacrifice, trust, love and female subordination to their husbands. The pluralist conception of marriage in Islam, whether at the legal or moral level, means as a practical matter that not all Islamic conceptions are consistent with a liberal order, and accordingly, any kind of Islamic arbitration system must be subject to the supervision of the liberal legal order to confirm that results of arbitration do not violate mandatory provisions of family law. Finally, the author offers the practical example of New York courts’ experience with enforcing (or not) family law arbitrations conducted pursuant to Jewish law to demonstrate the capacity of the courts in a liberal jurisdiction to give effect to the autonomy of nonliberal citizens while ensuring that the autonomy of the family is not used to deprive any of its members of their fundamental rights as citizens.

This book provides a distinctive account of Edward Said's critique of modern culture by highlighting the religion-secularism distinction on which it is predicated. This distinction is both literal and figurative. It refers, on the one hand, to religious traditions and to secular traditions and, on the other hand, to tropes that extend the meaning and reference of religion and secularism in indeterminate ways. The author takes these tropes as the best way of organizing Said's heterogeneous corpus - from Joseph Conrad and the Fiction of Autobiography, his first book, to Orientalism, his most influential book, to his recent writings on the Palestinian question. The religion-secularism distinction, as an act of imagination and narrative continuity, lies behind Said's cultural criticism, his notion of intellectual responsibility, and his public controversy with Michael Walzer about the meaning and the uses of the Exodus story and about the question of Palestine.

Exclusivism is a highly appealing option in religious terms. It reflects the believers’ commitment to their religion as well as their conviction that their religion is true, and that other religions are therefore false. My central argument is that the justification of inter-religious pluralism, while not less well established than that of exclusivism, successfully preserves the social intuitions of religious devotion and commitment. The effect of this justification, which remains valid despite objections raised against various forms of inter-religious pluralism, is to undermine exclusivism.

Religious freedom is often thought to protect not only religious practices but also the underlying religious beliefs of citizens. But what should be said about religious beliefs that oppose religious freedom itself or that deny the concept of equal citizenship? The author argues here that such beliefs, while protected against coercive sanction, are rightly subject to attempts at transformation by the state in its expressive capacities. Transformation is entailed by a commitment to publicizing the reasons and principles that justify the basic rights of citizens.

The philosophy of religion and theology are related to the culture in which they have developed. These disciplines provide a source of values and vision to the cultures of which they are part, while at the same time they are delimited and defined by their cultures. This book compares the ideas of two contemporary philosophers, John Hick and Seyyed Hossein Nasr, on the issues of religion, religions, the concept of the ultimate reality, and the notion of sacred knowledge. On a broader level, it compares two world-views: the one formed by Western Christian culture, which is religious in intention but secular in essence; the other Islamic, formed through the assimilation of traditional wisdom, which is turned against the norms of secular culture and is thus religious both in intention and essence.

This paper examines a variety of intellectual responses to the religious and philosophical issues raised by religious plurality. While the specific questions raised by religious plurality differ across traditions, the more general problem that faces all religious intellectuals is how to provide a compelling theoretical account of the relationship between the various religions of the world. The paper briefly reviews religious exclusivism and inclusivism, before focusing upon theories of religious pluralism. After clarifying the distinction between religious pluralism and relativism about religion, and comparing and assessing various forms of pluralism, the paper concludes that how compelling any particular theory of religious diversity proves to be will be dependent upon how convincing one finds the underlying understanding of religion. This implies that the real priority for scholars concerned with rival theories of religious plurality is to strive towards a common understanding of the nature of religion.

This paper introduces views both hostile to and supportive of the ideas of secularism and religious neutrality in the jurisprudence of Muslim minorities (fiqh al-aqalliyyat).

Religious exclusivism, or the idea that only one religion can be true, fuels hatred and conflict in the modern world. Certain objections to religious pluralism, together with associated defences of exclusivism are flawed. I defend a moderate religious pluralism, according to which the truth of one religion does not automatically imply the falsity of others. The thought that we can respect persons even when holding them mistaken strains credulity when we are dealing with religious convictions. Moreover, exclusivism is informed by inadequate approaches to discourse about transcendence. The intentional-descriptivist approach to reference is not comprehensively adequate, and yet is assumed by some objections to pluralism. The irreducibly metaphorical character of much religious language means that differences between world religions can be more apparent than real. Approaches to religious education should embrace a moderate religious pluralism.

The path of religious pluralism starts with the fact that our world contains a number of religious faiths having different ideas of the nature of divinity as the main and fundamental principle of religions and therefore, different and various dogmas, rites, and rituals.Despite the claim that the idea of religious pluralism is a product of modern philosophical schools, specifically new epistemological principles, I have attempted to demonstrate that what I have called "pluralistic religion," as a part of a necessary and substantial distinction that has to be drawn between this hypothesis and John Hick's classic theory of "religious pluralism," is strongly rooted in the principle of "ultimate truth and uniqueness of ..