Kom: Časopis za Religijske Nauke (Jan 2019)
The Qom school and a critique of religious pluralism with special reference to Ayatollah Javadi Amoli's philosophical analysis
Abstract
In the past few decades, the school in the historic city of Qom has played an important role in directing strategic scientific and cultural developments in Iran and the Islamic world. Scientific and research work in this school has been going on for more than a millennium and has been continuously developed in the light of a close cooperation of representatives of this school and similar, old, schools established in the renowned Islamic learning centres in the city of Medina and in several cities in present-day Iraq, Lebanon and Iran. The famous schools of Islamic philosophy, jurisprudence, and exegesis were founded in Qom, and philosophical disciplines were often given great importance. One of the most influential representatives of the Qom School of Philosophy today is Ayatollah Javadi Amoli. Analysing the content of his books, we will be introduced to the basic guidelines of the philosophical methodology of the Qom school in the case of critique of religious pluralism. Ayatollah Javadi fiercely criticizes the idea of religious pluralism because it has been widely popularized by modern Western thinkers and theologians, though they have never made it sufficiently clear that it is based solely on Kant's, that is, NEO-Kantian, relativism of knowledge. He explains that relativism of knowledge does not mean that there are numerous paths that lead to truth, so that we can say that all people will finally be saved regardless of which path they were on and which religion they belonged to. According to his analysis, relativism of knowledge means that no one can reach the truth and that the truth is not revealed in any religion. Ayatollah Javadi warns that religious pluralism solves the problems of salvation and tolerance in a destructive way, because we will be forced to accept philosophical principles that completely discredit the essence of religious knowledge. To prove it thoroughly, he analyses various meanings of relativity and relativism. His conclusion is that some of these meanings of relativity are accepted and used in the religious cognitive stage, but that relativism of knowledge is in obvious epistemological contradiction to all religions.
