Search for the Theological Grounds to Develop Inclusive Islamic Interpretations: Some Insights from Rationalistic Islamic Maturidite Theology

Abstract

Inclusive religious interpretations accept that a salvation beyond their teachings can be found. Whether Islam accepts inclusive religious interpretations or not, constitutes one of the most debated issues related to Islam in our days. In this paper it is argued that, although al-Maturidi’s views can hardly be described as inclusive, the dynamic rationalistic Maturidite theology (so-called Maturidite “software”) may help produce inclusive Islamic interpretations. In addition to the key two principles of rationalistic Maturidite theology, especially the Maturidite understanding of the fate of people not exposed to divine mission, may be understood as accepting that the people may reach faith which is similar to valid through their reason, and they may be saved hereafter, although they do not believe in Islamic teachings in a strict sense. This Maturidite position can also be used to justify the inclusive understanding of Quranic verses. By and large, Maturidite theological views analyzed in this article can be seen as factors laying the grounds to develop inclusive Islamic interpretations.

Black and white or shades of grey: Religious approaches and Muslim marital conflict

“…Likewise, other social indicators, including socioeconomic status, ethnic identity, length of marriage, and age are reported in Table 1 but proved not to provide insight into the processes described below. Instead, approach to religion emerged as a saturated concept in vivo, and thus, I present participants according to their approach to Islam: those who accept only one interpretation of Islam, their own, as clearly superior to others are considered to be exclusivist, while those who accept multiple interpretations are considered to be inclusivist (Zhussipbek and Satershinov, 2019). After identifying specific religious modes emerging from the data (see Table 2), I used Mill's (1843: 454) Method of Agreement to capture the convergences and divergences in participant narratives.…”