A new look at the history of Islam (A review of thomas bauer’s book “the culture of ambiguity and pluralism: Towards a different image of Islam”)

Abstract

Thomas Bauer’s monograph “The Culture of Ambiguity and Pluralism: Towards a Different Image of Islam” (Berlin: Directmedia Publishing, 2020. 400 p.) is an absolutely new interpretation of Islam as a world religion, based on the concept of “ambiguity”, which assumes a universal ability to ambiguously interpret certain phenomena of everyday life and public life. The monograph attempts to destroy one of the most persistent stereotypes about Islam as a religion that regulates human life in detail. The author proves that for a longer period of its history, Islam was much more tolerant to the spiritual practices of believers, to their way of life. The author cites numerous information from religious texts of the 8–19th centuries, which clearly show the high tolerance of Islamic culture to polysemy. The author justifies the validity of various ways of reading the Qur’an, describing this diversity as mercy and grace. The rejection of this tolerance in Islam, according to the author, occurred in the middle of the 19th century, largely under the influence of the West, which aggressively imposed its radical ideas about the truth. As a result, there was a break with the previous attitudes focused on tolerance. And then Islam, as self-defense, adopted modern forms that deny tolerance and pluralism. The main scientific result obtained by the author is that even in our time, Islam, having the richest internal sources, is able to ensure the coexistence of various standards, while abandoning the struggle for the exclusivity of its own values.