Universalism - Islam

Islam

Islam recognizes to a certain extent the validity of the Abrahamic religions, the Qur'an identifying Jews, Christians, and "Sabi'un" or "baptists" (usually taken as a reference to the Mandeans) as "people of the book" (ahl al-kitab). Later Islamic theologians expanded this definition to include Zoroastrians, and later even Hindus, as the early Islamic empire brought many people professing these religions under its dominion, but the Qur'an explicitly identifies only Jews, Christians, and Sabians as People of the Book.

Views of Muslims range along a continuum, from the most inclusive teaching common among liberal Muslims summed up in Surah 2:62,256 - "Verily! Those who believe and those who are Jews and Christians, and Sabians, whoever believes in Allah and the Last Day and do righteous good deeds shall have their reward with their Lord, on them shall be no fear, nor shall they grieve...let there be no compulsion in religion" - that all monotheistic religions or people of the book have a chance of salvation, to the most exclusive teaching common amongst Salafis and Wahhabis, and supported by several works of medieval Islamic theology and by traditions (hadith) which are considered correct (sahih) by Sunni Muslims, for the most part are summed up in Surah 9:5,29: "Then, when the sacred months have passed, slay the idolaters wherever ye find them, and take them, and besiege them, and lay in wait in every stratagem of war. But if they repent and establish worship and pay the jizya, then leave their way free. Lo! Allah is Forgiving, Merciful...Fight against such of those who have been given the Scripture as believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, and forbid not that which Allah hath forbidden by His messenger, and follow not the Religion of Truth, until they pay the jizya readily, being brought low ."

The interpretation of all of these passages are hotly contested amongst various schools of thought, traditionalist and reform-minded, and branches of Islam, from the reforming Qur'anists and Ahmadiyya to the ultra-traditionalist Salafi, as is the doctrine of abrogation (naskh) which is used to determine which verses take precedent, based on reconstructed chronology, with later verses superseding earlier ones. The traditional chronology places Surah 9 as the last or second-to-last surah revealed, thus, in traditional exegesis, it gains a large power of abrogation, and verses 9:5,29,73 are held to have abrogated 2:256 The ahadith also play a major role in this, and different schools of thought assign different weightings and rulings of authenticity to different hadith, with the four schools of Sunni thought accepting the Six Authentic Collections, generally along with the Muwatta Imam Malik. Depending on the level of acceptance of rejection of certain traditions, the interpretation of the Koran can be changed immensely, from the Qur'anists and Ahmadiyya who reject the ahadith, to the Salafi, or ahl al-hadith, who hold the entirety of the traditional collections in great reverence.

Traditional Islam views the world as bipartite, consisting of the House of Islam, that is, where people live under the Islamic law - the Shariah - and the House of War, that is, where the people do not live under Islamic law, which must be proselytized (see da'wah) using whatever resources available, including, in some traditionalist and conservative interpretations, the use of violence, as holy struggle in the path of Allah, to either convert its inhabitants to Islam, or to rule them under the Shariah (cf. dhimmi); since the abolition of the Caliphate, there has been debate about the proper role of divisions of the world in Islam, and whether the traditional bipartite division is sufficient to meet the needs of the ummah (world community of Muslims) and world moving in to the future.

The Ash'ari school of Sunni aqidah (theology) holds that those who had never heard of the message of Islam, by virtue of isolation, can still be saved by the grace of Allah, similar to Karl Rahner's concept of the Anonymous Christian. Sufis generally hold to a much more inclusivist and tolerant view of other faiths and religious systems than traditional Sunni and Shi'a Islam.