I would like to present a few remarks on pluralism.
First. Let us suppose that we can draw on the world map, in different colours, the different human civilizations as an observer from the outer space could see them. We can then have the pessimistic view that it is in the nature of these civilizations to clash; or we can focus on the optimistic question of the ways by which they can enter dialogue with each other and ultimately coming together to consitute what Senegalese poet and statesman Léopold Sédar Senghor, borrowing the phrase from Father Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, liked to call a “Civilization of the Universal”; by which he meant a civilization created by that very convergence of the different faces of the human adventure. Are we to choose between the dark picture and a rosy picture, or is it that maybe the map with its different colors was wrong in the first place? I think it is because it ignores pluralism, which is the way in which those zones are not separated, interpenetrate each other, are intertwined, giving to our observer from outer space the image of fragmented, de-centered and interconnected multiplicities and of blended colors. Let me choose as a concrete example the map famously designed by Samuel Huntington (in his more than a decade old Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of the Modern World) and the treatment that Sub Saharan Africa received in the scheme. At first, it is just wiped out, just does not count and therefore does not exist. Then some Africanity centered on South Africa is considered a possibility while the rest of the continent is identified with Islam. Well Africa is Islam, true, but it is also Christianity and other religions, it is the continuously living spirit of its millennia-old religious philosophies, it is westernization as well: looking for Africanity? It is that multiplicity, that continuous openness from within to otherness which is pluralism. This is valid for all areas of civilization.
Second. We want to oppose to the pessimistic view of a “clash of cultures” the optimistic view of an oriented encounter of cultures which presupposes that each culture recognizes the truth of another: that is what we call pluralism. Now is pluralism really possible, that is to say: non contradictory? In other words can we really at the same time affirm that each culture expresses the truth without saying that none of them does? Or if we take the case of religions, doesn’t the affirmation that all religions are true amount to the affirmation that none of them is?
If we consider that it pertains to the very nature of identity to exclude what is not “the same”, then we think that it follows necessarily from their multiplicity (their “saraband”) that differences, especially religious differences, are bound to “clash”. No pluralism is possible. It is only if we can consider, on the other hand, that identity can be itself and at the same time give room to otherness within itself that pluralism becomes possible. In the history of philosophy the model par excellence of pluralism is Leibniz’s system of monads where each monad expresses from its own perspective and more or less confusedly the totality. The picture of such a world is the best possible representation of a multiplicity that does not amount to skeptical relativism. It makes sense to say that each perspective (monad) expresses the truth, not partially, not in a limited way, but in its totality.
What I would like to propose as an introduction to our discussions is a reflection about the specific question of the possibility of religious pluralism through an interrogation of the possibility of what can be called a non sectarian understanding of truth and identity. The stake is then of course peace as one can say that the true name of peace is pluralism. Because only pluralism can foster an attitude towards peace which means the capacity to not only tolerate difference, but to be hospitable to it. And I think that such an attitude is the sign that one is up to what the Koran presents as the test of difference. Thus we read : “O you men! Surely We have created you a male and a female, and made you nations and tribes that you may know each other, surely the most honorable of you with God is the one most careful of his duty and God is Oft-returning to mercy, Merciful.” (49:13)
If difference is a test, what is a pluralist response to it?
To answer this question I would like to consider a well known Islamic tradition, that of the so-called seventy three sects. What this hadith (tradition) says is that, according to Prophet Muhammad himself, his Umma (Community) will end up being divided into into seventy three sects (another version of this tradition mentions seventy two but, of course, these variations are not important) and only one of them will be saved. Which sect will be saved is a crucial question of course and it is natural that everybody thinks that they belong to the right one promised to salvation. My thesis will be
The question that misses the significance of the test of difference is the one that asks: which of the seventy three sects has the truth on its side?
When it is posed this way the question only expresses exclusion and violence. At first, what it asks for is to choose the interpretation that is true and hence to exclude and anathematize all the others. “Only one leads to salvation”, the tradition says ; out of its path there is only perdition and ruin. This seems at first to epitomize perfectly the impossibility of pluralism. On the contrary, plurality is a metaphor for evil, for deviation, for the degradation into multiplicity, because of time and becoming, of an authentic meaning that is now to be retrieved in its pristine purity. This is the very premise of a “purist” understanding of the seventy three sects tradition. To extol one’s own fidelity to « what originally was », before the degradation of becoming, naturally leads to self justified excommunication of every difference from the vantage point of one’s closure in one’s « purity », out of reach of the contamination by time. About such an attitude of self closure in a supposed state of purity leading to violence against the different, the plural, here is what the Koran says : « be not of those who divided their religion and became sects every sect rejoicing in what they had with them » (32:30) while another passage (4:49) makes the following precision : « Have you not considered those who attribute purity to themselves? Nay, God purifies whom He pleases. » In connection to that it is also important to recall the prophetic tradition which opposes any idea of becoming as the opposite and the enemy of fidelity and authenticity: on the contrary, being is invited to make its peace with time considered as the location of its creative unfolding. « Do not vilify time, says that tradition, because time is God ». All things considered, religious violence is violence against time, the times that are a changing, as Bob Dylan famously sings. And to favor peace is first to establish peace with time.
I am saying that in any true experience truth is present, in person. It is not therefore a particular content, a doctrine, a theology, a ritual, a legislation, not even a philosophy. It is merely an attitude of openness to the plurality of contents which defines pluralism. That attitude can be characterized quickly as neither a universalism that excludes differences, nor a skeptical relativism, but rather an attention to the multiple ways in which Truth manifests itself. In other words we are not talking about one among the seventy three sects, we are talking about a non sectarian understanding of the truth. This attitude consists all in the capacity to situate one self beyond what Indian poet and philosopher Muhammad Iqbal has called the dispute of the seventy two sects. Here is what he writes in his poetry titled Gabriel’s Wing :
The true doctrine has been lost in the disputes
Of the seventy two sects :
Impossible to comprehend it if your perception
Is not impartial !
It is my contention here that we must understand these lines as meaning that the sect which will be saved among the seventy three is the seventy forth, the one which is attentive to the way in which the truth is present in each of the seventy three. That is how the “impartial perception” (impartial vis-à-vis the 72 even if one does not stand outside of all of them altogether) is to be understood, as the perception which is capable of escaping as it were from the prison of its sole perspective. The saved sect, therefore, is not other than each of the others when they are educated to openness to a pluralistic attitude (the possibility of pluralism, ultimately, rests on an education to pluralism, to the existence of the seventy fourth sect).
This attitude does not only favor peace. It is peace in its very nature. I would like to conclude briefly on this interpretation of the prophetic tradition of the seventy seven sects by extrapolating it beyond the internal pluralism of Islam towards religious pluralism and difference in general. Such an extrapolation is natural because what the interpretation says is that a pluralistic attitude is founded on the premise that human beings being who they are cannot but aim at the same truth through what they (dis)believe. This pluralistic understanding of the differences is well expressed again in Iqbal’s poetry (the inspiration coming from Jalal ud Din rumi is easily felt here):
“Love sees no difference between the Ka’aba
And the Temple of idols:
The latter is the epiphany of the Beloved, the former His sanctuary.”
L’amoureux ne trouve nulle différence entre la Ka’aba
Et le Temple des idoles :
Celui-ci est l’apparition de l’Ami, celle-là en est le sanctuaire.