He argues with impressive effect that the remarkable similarities in the theological and intellectual developments among the Abrahamic religions should be the new basis of dialogue (1987a). However, in the search for meaning, the hermeneutical quest, when we do not address the question 'For whom and in whose interest?', then pluralism simply becomes 'a passive response to more and more possibilities, none of which shall ever be practised' (Tracy 1987, p. 90). 'This is the perfect ideology for the modern bourgeois mind. Such a pluralism makes a genial confusion in which one tries to enjoy the pleasures of difference without ever committing oneself to any particular vision of resistance, liberation and hope' (ibid.).
For those who eke out an existence on the margins of society, living under the yoke of oppression and struggling with the equally oppressed Other in the hope of liberation, a pluralism of splendid and joyous intellectual neutrality is not an option. On this basis, I argue for the freedom to rethink the meanings and use of scripture in a racially divided, economically exploitative and patriarchal society and to forge hermeneutical keys that will enable us to read the text in such a way as to advance the liberation of all people.
-Farid Esack, Qur'an, Liberation and Pluralism: An Islamic Perspective of Interreligious Solidarity Against Oppression, p. 78
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