Interreligious Relations with No Self: A Mystical Path to Omnilogue?

Abstract

AbstractVarious models of interreligious relations have been proposed in recent scholarship, including most prominently the several varieties of inclusivism, exclusivism, and pluralism. One abiding presupposition shared across these models takes the religious adherent (or community of adherents) as a unified individual (or collective of such individuals). This assumption overlooks an important feature of the mystical strains of religiosity, which is to negate selfhood. This article seeks to problematize standard scholarly models of interreligious relations by working through and applying to them such mystical understandings of (non-)selfhood, with particular focus on the Islamic mystics Abū Yazīd al-Bisṭamī, Abū l-Qāsem al-Junayd, ʿAbd al-Karīm ibn Hawāzin al-Qushayrī, Farīd al-Dīn ʿAṭṭār Nayshābūrī, and Muḥyiddīn Ibn al-ʿArabī. Based on this textual study, I propose an alternative to interreligious dialogue more adequately termed ‘polyglot monologue’ or, in order to avoid pluralistic implications, ‘omnilogue’.