Studies in the History of Religious and Political Pluralism – serie

This book examines Pakistan’s nuclear behaviour from the 1950s onwards against the background of the emerging global non-proliferation system. The author probes the broader questions of the extent to which Pakistan’s conduct was factored into the global non-proliferation regime and why that regime failed to constrain Pakistan’s choice to go nuclear.The book goes on to argue that in order to fully understand Pakistan’s nuclear policy, the Indian case must also be considered. Therefore, this book provides a comprehensive scholarly account of the history of both India’s and Pakistan’s technological developments leading to their decision to develop nuclear weapons and confront the NPT constraints. The question of nuclear proliferation by Pakistan’s most prominent scientist, Dr A. Q. Khan, its nuclear behaviour after the disclosure of this proliferation case, and the recent development of counter-proliferation measures at a global level are all analysed in this volume. The security of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons and the question of the state’s reliability within the ranks of the global community remain hotly debated issues. Pakistan and the New Nuclear Taboo offers the compelling argument that a new nuclear taboo against proliferation has emerged to prevent nuclear risks regionally and globally: since 2004, it is argued, Pakistan has played a key role in helping to establish this new nuclear taboo against the proliferation of nuclear weapons. The ‘three models’ approach adopted here provides the most comprehensive and up-to-date theoretical perspective on Pakistan’s nuclear behaviour and helps illuminate nuclear policy dynamics and the role of international institutions in regulating the conduct of states in other regions as well.

The inspiration for this book arose from the opening of the Srinagar-Muzaffarabad bus route on 7 April 2005, the first direct link between the two parts of divided Kashmir since 1947. The original impetus for change in the region arose not from politicians but from ex-military figures in Pakistan and India who had made a direct approach to the Institute for Multi-Track Diplomacy (IMTD), an independent, not-for-profit organization in the United States headed by former US Ambassador John W. McDonald. Most of the twenty-six retired military figures from India and Pakistan interviewed in this book accept that with both countries possessing nuclear weapons since 1998, choosing war to resolve outstanding disputes is no longer a sensible or realistic option. They differ greatly, however, in their analysis of the opportunities and pathways towards a sustainable peace in South Asia, with the greatest divergence of views on the Kashmir dispute. The material contained in the interviews is enhanced with biographical and other notes, along with a comprehensive introduction and conclusion. The detailed Appendices provide an analysis of religious-based extremist violence in Kashmir and Pakistan.

In this book, the author assesses the social vision of three western Muslim intellectuals, Seyyed H. Nasr, Bassam Tibi and Tariq Ramadan. He finds that the thoughts of Nasr and his students promote a kind of tradition-based society, which is in harmony with the Divine Law in Islam and a hierarchical structure of society. The thoughts of Tibi advocate the concept of Euro-Islam, which tries to rationalize Islam and renders it a personal religion in the private domain. Finally, the thoughts of Ramadan emphasize a communicative society, in which dialogue between Muslims and non-Muslims on public affairs is crucial. The author tries to understand how these three social orders can complement each other. He compares and contrasts their ideas in order to show that modern Islamic thought is not monolithic but pluralistic, and that they present different social visions for Islam in the West. However, Muslims are often labelled as a minority group and so implicitly excluded from being part of the West: the thoughts of Muslim writers help reflect this problem. The author maintains that these Muslim intellectuals in the West should be fully recognized as western intellectuals.

The Church and wider society in Northeast India have witnessed a number of shifts in ethnic identity and the resultant inter-ethnic conflicts since the 1980s are threatening the peaceful co-existence of various ethnic groups. Caught up in the throes of such ethnic turmoil, people of the region are confronted with two options. On the one hand, there is a need to safeguard their respective ethnic identities against the dominant hegemony; on the other, there is a need to promote a peaceful co-existence amongst diverse ethnic groups. These twin challenges, in their turn, confront the Northeast Indian tribal theologies by posing a series of questions with serious implications: how is one to maintain a balance between these two conflicting identities? What should the priority be: preserved ethnic identity or ethnic blending? In all this, what is the role of tribal theology? Notwithstanding the importance of safeguarding ethnic identity, this book focuses on the urgent necessity of promoting a peaceful co-existence among diverse ethnic groups by exploring their various tribal theologies and cultural standpoints and finding a common base.

In this book three main things have been accomplished. First, it locates the emergence of religious pluralism as a problem for Christian theology. Secondly, it shows the critical weaknesses in the approaches to pluralism that we find in the works of Gavin D’Costa, George Lindbeck and John Hick, all major players in the field of religious pluralism. Retrieving theological material from seventeenth-century Comenius and eighteenth-century Zinzendorf, the book shows that the Protestant tradition has suitable theological material that can better serve the development of a theology of religious pluralism. Thirdly, the book enters into dialogue with Islam and highlights exciting new approaches to addressing the issues of salvation, the Qur’an and Christology. One critical outcome of the book is that it breaks new ground in showing the limitations of liberation theology and proposes a fascinating, new, pluralism-sensitive hermeneutical approach to contextual theology.