The Socio-Theological Foundations of Religious and Interreligious Dialogues in the Qurʾān

Articles in Press

Document Type : Original Research Article

Author

Head of the Sociology of Religion Section, Institute for Social Studies and Research, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran

10.30513/rhj.2026.8892.1032

Abstract

Dialogue is the foundation of peaceful collective life in the contemporary modern world. Within the religious and interreligious lifeworld as well, dialogue constitutes the basis of peaceful religiosity. The foundation of a peaceful religious dialogue is also tolerance–understanding–agreement; which itself is a socio-cultural institution and the product of the history, culture, and society in which this process is to be realized. In other words, religious dialogues—interreligious, intrareligious, and extrareligious—arise from the interaction and tension between text and context. In this regard, the mode of reading and interpreting sacred texts (including the Qurʾān) can contribute, from cognitive and doctrinal perspectives, to understanding these dialogues. The problem addressed in this article is likewise the hermeneutical understanding of interreligious, intrareligious, extrareligious, and inter-sectarian religious dialogues within the contemporary Islamic lifeworld, with reference to the text of the Qurʾān. By posing the following guiding key question—“How is the culture of foundational dialogue in the Qurʾān formulated, and upon what social context does it take shape?”—this article seeks to provide text-based responses accompanied by their hermeneutical interpretation. Accordingly, for this purpose, the methods of “religious and theological hermeneutics” and the “sociology of theology theory” have been employed, as appropriate to the discussion, in order to analyze the responses.

Keywords

References

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Available Online from 24 December 2025

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