Isma'il al-Faruqi (1921-1986) and inter-faith dialogue: the man, the scholar, the participant
Bibliographic record
Abstract
In the contemporary period of Muslim-Christian dialogue and inter-faith study, there are only a few Western-trained Muslim scholars who are recognised for their study of other faiths and for their contributions to inter-faith dialogue. One such scholar was Ismaʿil al-Faruqi (1921-1986). Throughout his academic career he taught, published and was actively engaged in inter-faith study and dialogue. In the 1960s and 1970s, he was one of the main Western Muslim representatives in dialogue with the Vatican, the World Council of Churches and other Christian organisations. He and his wife were murdered in 1986. This study critically examines al-Faruqi's methodology of engagement with non-Muslims, its practical applications, and explores the reasons why he spent a lifetime involved in religious dialogue. In Part One, his life is presented as a biographical narrative and analysed using identity theory to ascertain some of the reasons and motivations for his lifelong commitment to dialogue and inter-faith study. Part Two introduces various methodologies for the study of religion that were available to him and then al-Faruqi is placed within the context of the history of Muslim-non-Muslim encounter. In Part Three, the development of his methodology is presented through his voice by documenting the stages of his thought as seen in his writings. His three-fold methodology of comparative study, meta-religious principles and dialogical applications are examined not only as theory but also in terms of their applications. It is in the application process that one can see the adjustments and contextual uses of the methods that he developed, such as his insistence upon ethics as a means
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.006 | 0.004 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.015 | 0.029 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.004 | 0.005 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.004 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".