Studies March 2015

Religious pluralism in Islam, or the awareness of otherness

The behaviour of certain individuals or groups who falsely claim to be followers of Islam (the so-called Islamic State in Iraq and Syria in particular) compels us to question this religion’s attitude toward non-Muslims and religious pluralism in general.

In fact, the current reality reveals a striking contrast between the principles set out in the Koran, applied by the Prophet and also, to a large extent, by past Muslim societies on one hand, and their negation and inversion by the modern usurpers of the fundamental values of Islam on the other. Therefore in order to fully understand the issue, we must start with these scriptural principles which, over centuries, have gone beyond being pious wishes to become something with which Muslims have truly identified until recent years.

This paper is written by Éric Geoffroy, an Islam scholar at the University of Strasbourg, expert on Sufism and writer.