Cooperation or competition : the rhetoric of Rashid al-Ghannushi̇ on pluralism

Abstract EN

-Though not a novel problem, the issue of pluralism in the current global scenario is engaging the Muslim scholarship profoundly.

Since the very inception of Islam, Muslims confronted and responded to a large number of religio-ethnic and political varieties.

Nonetheless, in the modern global era, experiencing current contexts and recent developments, the problem of pluralism has attained tremendous centrality, and so has its various dimensions (political, religious, ethnic, lingual, etc.).

Keeping this in view, pluralism, therefore, is being continuously visited and revisited by the Muslim scholars, thinkers and movements alike.

Rāshid al-Ghannūshi̇, the founder and primary ideologue of ̄ al-Nahḍah, like others, is heavily engaged in making his ‘activist-intellectual’ contribution to solve many questions related to pluralism.

His own practical endeavors coupled with his various academic articles, especially Participation of Islamists in a Non-Islamic Government, will be carefully scrutinized to explore his reading on Pluralism.

The current paper, through analytical, objective, and historical perspectives (and in the context of post-Arab Spring atmosphere) mainly attempts to understand the approach of Rāshid al-Ghannūshi̇ ̄vis-à-vis Pluralism.

The study also tries to find out that on what grounds and what sort of motivations and contestations made Ghannūshi̇ ̄ to favour the theory of ‘coexistence’ and ‘cooperation’ among the various political identities.

After a careful exploration of the subject, some of the important conclusions are drawn in the concluding section of the paper.