Religious Plurality from the Perspective of Islamic Religious Education

Abstract

The complexity and multifaceted character of creation could lead us to expect that people – an important part of this creation – see plurality as an enrichment. Nevertheless, contrary to this well-intended assumption, reality often looks quite different. For various reasons, plurality – particularly in its religious and worldview manifestation – is viewed increasingly as an artificially induced situation that is owed to a wrongly understood tolerance, a situation that threatens one’s own cultural and religious identity and therefore must be overcome. One can see how non-intuitive a respectful approach to plurality or religious and worldview diversity is can also be seen in the fact that it is also being increasingly rejected in liberal democratic society. This again indicates that an attitude that guarantees a peaceful and respectful co-existence in a pluralist society can only be appropriated through reflection and self-control and must then be constantly put into practice. An essential role in the shaping of a respective attitude to plurality naturally belongs to religions, which are instructed to encounter the growing religious and worldview diversity in our society with new and theologically grounded approaches. In contrast to the apologetic assertion that religions as such are pluralist in themselves, one can say that