People often refer to Indonesia as the largest, most tolerant, and most moderate Muslim country in the world. At a time when many Muslim countries globally have been involved in political conflicts, civil wars, and other strife, Indonesia remains an oasis of pluralism, a model Muslim country. The Indonesian version of democracy not only disproves the claim that Islam and democracy are incompatible, but also demonstrates how Islam can be maintained within a modern nation state.

Several parts of the Middle East have also witnessed years of fighting, with almost all of the violence perpetrated by Muslims against Muslims in spite of the many verses in the Qur’an that support revering pluralism within Islam and between the Abrahamic religions. Most people have at one time or another asked, ‘If there is only one God why are there so many religions?’ A good question that I as a Rabbi have often been asked.

This is my answer. The Qur’an declares that Allah could have made all of us monotheists, a single religious community, but (didn’t) in order to test our commitment to the religion that each of us have been given by God.

“If Allah had so willed, He would have made you a single people, but (God’s plan is) to test you in what He has given you: so compete in all virtues as in a race. The goal of you all is to (please) Allah who will show you on judgment day) the truth of the matters in which you dispute.” (Qur’an 5:48)

This means that religious pluralism is the will of God. Yet for centuries many believers in one God have chided and depreciated each other’s religions, and some believers have even resorted to forced conversions, expulsions and inquisitions. Monotheists all pray to the same God, and all prophets of monotheistic faiths are inspired by the same God.

So how did this intolerance come about, and how can we eliminate religious intolerance from the Abrahamic religions. Greek philosophy, with its requirement that truth must be unchanging and universal, influenced most teachers of sacred scripture during Medieval times to believe that religion was a zero sum game; the more truth I find in your scripture the less truth there is in mine.

Instead of understanding........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)