Interfaith Dialogue in Islam

Why is the Quran interpreted differently, unlike the Bhagwad Gita, which is inferred the same among Hindus across the world? T he issue of different interpretations exists everywhere in the religious discipline. This is not simply a matter of the Quran, rather it is a matter which pertains to all religious books. In the Gita, Krishna urges Arjun in these words: ‘O Arjun, go ahead and fight!’ In these scriptures too, there is an injunction to engage in battle. When you study different religions, you will realize that they do speak about war. You will also realize that every religion is basically a religion of love, compassion and peace. However, as an exception, every religion allows for war for the purpose of defence. While Gandhi interpreted the words ‘O Arjun, go ahead and fight’ to mean a peaceful ‘internal struggle’, the same text was interpreted by Bal Gangadhar Tilak to mean a violent and concerted action to end injustice. Religion is not a mathematical discipline; it is a subject of humanities, which is open to interpretation. For example, political science has more than ten interpretations of the term ‘sovereign’ and ‘sovereignty’. Any subject that is based on mathematics is less likely to have conflicting interpretations, but this is not the same in disciplines of humanities. For example, lawyers contest the same case from two different perspectives based on the same constitution. Are Sunni books of Hadith more authentic than Shia books of Hadith? I n the personal library of every Islamic scholar and academic (from any school of thought), all the books of Hadith exist. It is not that a certain book of Hadith is more authentic than another, the case is of certain traditions being more authentic than others. Some traditions have been repeated in many books of Hadith in the same manner, while there are some accounts which have been narrated by different people, differently. The only difference between different scholars throughout history has been their approach of validating the authenticity of a hadith or a tradition of the Prophet. Validating a hadith is an entirely different field in itself and many books have been written on the subject. The same holds true for Shia scholars – they have their own approach to validate a certain hadith. Generally among Shia scholars, if a hadith can be traced back to, or has been narrated by one of their Imams who succeeded Hazrat Ali, then that hadith is considered authentic. The authors of different books of Hadith just have different approaches in compiling and verifying the traditions they gather.