Roger Boase, ed., Ashgate: Hants, 2005

If there were ever a time that a book on religious pluralism and peace ought to be required reading for politicians, public intellectuals, policymakers, and the media, as well as a general audience, that time is now. Conceived as a response to the excoriation of Islam after 9/11, Roger Boase has put together a remarkable book on the need for interreligous dialogue as the only way to “lay the foundations for a more peaceful world (p. xviii).” This need reverberates through each chapter, be it written by a Jewish, Christian, or Muslim scholar. This means that, as in a symphony, even though each scholar writes grounded in his/her own faith tradition (instrument), their collective voices chorus the same song. It makes for very powerful reading.

The book is divided into three parts, with a foreword on the importance of bridge building between cultures by HRH Prince Hassan bin Talal, the former crown prince of Jordan, a preface and an introduction by Boase, and a postscript by author Wendell Berry on the failure of war as a way to secure peace. After initially considering inviting scholars from all faith traditions to contribute, Boase decided there was not space in a single volume to do this in an adequate way. Therefore, the book focuses on contributions from scholars from the three Abrahamic faith traditions: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. He rightly says that this gives the book a tighter focus. Given the importance of the West/Islamic civilizational divide these days, it is important to have a book that focuses on these faith traditions. From a wider, global perspective, though, this may limit its potentially positive impact about the need for interreligous dialogue only to those readers who identify with one of the three Abrahamic faiths. Muslims in China, for instance, would need to appeal to whole different discourses in order to establish the need for constructive Sino-Muslim dialogue for peace.

Part One, “Defining the Issue,” has articles from three scholars who try to set the terms of the discourse: John Bowden talks about the Enlightenment’s ever-present backdrop and how its rational and critical approach to religion has affected and engendered a modern need for religious dialogue. On page 23, Diana Eck defines the different responses to the reality of religious diversity: exclusivism (our tradition is the one and only truth, excluding all others), inclusivism (there are many traditions, but ours is the culmination of or superior to all others), and pluralism (no one tradition has a monopoly on truth, and we can learn from each other without giving up our own commitments). Muhammad Legenhausen, a convert to Islam, theorizes a nonreductive approach to religious pluralism from an Islamic perspective.

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