Islamic Pluralism

Today I spent some time conducting a few interviews with Muslims in and around my local suburb. They main point of the interviews was to gain what sort of an understanding grass-roots Muslims had of the term ‘gospel’. Ironically the vast majority of them associated the term with gospel music.

That wasn’t the biggest surprise for me though. When I posed the question as to whether or not they felt it was important for people to believe in just one specific faith, and if they thought that all the others were false faiths, they all answered contrary to what I understood to be an orthodox Muslim view. All, without exception suggested a pluralistic view of belief in a god(s) – all roads lead to the same place in the end. As far as they were concerned (or at least as far as they were prepared to admit to me) there was no judgment for those who refused to adopt Islam. Surprising?

Mosques and my Pants

Today I went to fetch three pairs of long pants from a large syndicated clothing store in Cape Town. I was having them shortened (I’m short guy with short legs). When I went to collect them I was told “sorry the gentleman who is currently working on your pants has just slipped out to mosque (it is Friday after all).” So now I’ll go back and get them at 5 this afternoon.

I’m just wondering though if the guy who fixed my pants just happened to be a Roman Catholic and he really needed to go off to confession – would they let him? They let the Muslims go to mosque. Now don’t get me wrong – I’m quite happy for the guy to go to mosque – he has to in order to fulfill his religious duties to which he subscribes, and we live in a country with religious freedom. But I’m just wondering, if in certain working situations some religions are afforded more freedom than others?