WILFRED CANTWELL SMITH ON THE MEANING OF RELIGION AND ISLAM: A PLURALIST DILEMMA REEXAMINED

Abstract

Wilfred Cantwell Smith deserves attention for the following two reasons: his critical, straightforwardness against the conventional Christian and Western secular viewpoints on religion and his interest for, and yet deconstructive insights, on the meaning of Islam. Smith indeed, was a scholar of a versatile academic background. He was a Christian theologian and a pluralist who rejected exclusivism (as a position in religion), a historian of religion and a phenomenologist who struggled to live the meaning of the sacred and the profane (in his redefinition of religion) and a missiologist who was fascinated with Islam (and yet deconstructed its meaning). This article relies heavily on textual, critical and comparative analysis and reexamines Smith’s understanding of religion and Islam. It is supposed that his ideas on religion and Islam were much shaped by his pluralist stance.

WILFRED CANTWELL SMITH ON THE MEANING OF RELIGION AND ISLAM: A PLURALIST DILEMMA REEXAMINED