Intellectual Responses to Religious Pluralism

Intellectual Responses to Religious Pluralism

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 Across the world, the paradigm of hope has been replaced by many sentiments of pessimism.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?