Document Type : Original Article

Authors

• Narges Shakouri ¹
• Akbar Bagheri ²
• Mohammad Hossein Mozaffari, ³

¹ Researcher in Religious Studies, University of Religions and Denominations, Qom, Iran

² , Assistant Professor, Department of History and Shiʿa Denominations, University of Religions and Denominations, Qom, Iran

³ President of the Center for Peace and Dialogue, University of Religions and Denominations, Qom, Iran

Abstract

Despite the proliferation of discourses and institutional initiatives in recent decades, the issue of Islamic rapprochement continues to face persistent challenges, including instability, reactivity, and confinement to largely symbolic levels. A significant portion of these shortcomings stems from the absence of a theoretically designed framework for the sustainable management of sectarian disagreement—one capable of linking religious legitimacy and religious convergence.
 Focusing on this gap, the present article undertakes a comparative analysis of Christian ecumenism, understood as a processual experience within the Christian tradition, and Islamic rapprochement as two theological responses to the challenge of intra-religious plurality and conflict.
 The central question of the study is whether, from the perspective of Islamic theological foundations, ecumenism can be regarded as possessing a form of theological legitimacy, and what the boundaries and conditions of such legitimacy might be. Employing a descriptive–analytical approach and relying on documentary analysis, the study reconstructs the conceptual structures of both discourses through an examination of official ecumenical documents (including those of the World Council of Churches and the Second Vatican Council), contemporary Christian theological literature, and classical as well as contemporary Islamic juridical and theological sources. The findings demonstrate that while ecumenism and rapprochement display conceptual convergence at the level of a “theology of unity” and the “management of disagreement,” ecumenism, as a doctrinal model of unity, cannot be considered theologically legitimate as a model for emulation within Islam, due to its incompatibility with Islamic monotheistic principles and the revelatory–ijtihādī logic of Islamic theology. Nevertheless, certain procedural and managerial aspects of ecumenism, once subjected to theological delimitation and critical contextualization, may be selectively utilized within the framework of the discourse of Islamic rapprochement.

Keywords

• Christian Ecumenism
• Islamic Rapprochement
• Theological Legitimacy
• Theology of Unity
• Management of Intra-Religious Disagreement

Main Subjects

• Interfaith Theology