Defining Islamic Comparative Theology: 1 (Comparative Theology, Islam, and Society)

Over the last decades, Comparative Theology has established itself in varying methodological ways while considering the reality and plurality of religions. Although Comparative Theology can be a confessional or a non-confessional endeavor, most protagonists and theorists have been Western Christians. This could lead to the conclusion that Comparative Theology is in fact a Christian undertaking and implicitly or explicitly bound to conceptions like Christology. Furthermore, it could be argued that there is a certain asymmetry of power in the discourse between religions when the parameters of Comparative Theology are defined mainly by Christian theologians.

This volume aims to be the first step to programmatically and conceptionally explore the possibility of a genuinely Islamic Comparative Theology in a constructive endeavor. This endeavor should neither be misunderstood as an apologetic questioning of the status quo in Comparative Theology nor as a project that deconstructs Comparative Theology. Rather, by searching for new approaches from the Islamic traditions it opens up ways and forms of learning, hermeneutically complementary with prominent attitudes, methods in Comparative Theology.

Idris Nassery and Zishan Ghaffar, Paderborn University, Germany.