Comparative Religion

True to its title, the Malaysian writer Ghazali Basri, here describes the following religions: Animism, Taoism, Confucianism, Shintoism, Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism, Sikhism, Judaism, Zoroastrianism, and Paulinian Christianity (Old and New Testament). The self-described design of the author is ‘to uncover the plurality of religious phenomena’ and the essence of Islam (p. xxii). Comparative religion, today termed “religious phenomenology”, was founded by the famous German scientist Max Müller (1823–1900), even though the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) already had profoundly interacted with Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians. Müller should, however, be dethroned in favour of Ibn Hazm in view of the latter’s ground-breaking book, al-Fisal fi al-Milal wa Ahwa’ wa al-Nihal (1038), bringing together the philosophical schools of the Mu[tazilah and the Ash[ariyah. In fact, Ibn Hazm found commonalities in all religions in the domains of doctrine, mythology, ethics, ritual, and spirituality (pp. 10 f.).