Religious exclusivism
Encyclopedia
Religion
Religion is a collection of cultural systems, belief systems, and worldviews that establishes symbols that relate humanity to spirituality and, sometimes, to moral values. Many religions have narratives, symbols, traditions and sacred histories that are intended to give meaning to life or to...
is true. In its normative form it is simply the belief in one's own religion and non-belief in religions other than one's own. Linked with a doctrine of salvation, religious exclusivism teaches that only the members of one religion
Religion
Religion is a collection of cultural systems, belief systems, and worldviews that establishes symbols that relate humanity to spirituality and, sometimes, to moral values. Many religions have narratives, symbols, traditions and sacred histories that are intended to give meaning to life or to...
or sect
Sect
A sect is a group with distinctive religious, political or philosophical beliefs. Although in past it was mostly used to refer to religious groups, it has since expanded and in modern culture can refer to any organization that breaks away from a larger one to follow a different set of rules and...
will reach Heaven
Heaven
Heaven, the Heavens or Seven Heavens, is a common religious cosmological or metaphysical term for the physical or transcendent place from which heavenly beings originate, are enthroned or inhabit...
, while others will be doomed to eternal damnation.
Exclusivism is most prevalent in Abrahamic religions
Abrahamic religions
Abrahamic religions are the monotheistic faiths emphasizing and tracing their common origin to Abraham or recognizing a spiritual tradition identified with him...
. In Jewish tradition, it manifests in certain interpretations of the concept of the "chosen people
Chosen people
Throughout history and even today various groups of people have considered themselves as chosen by a deity for some purpose such as to act as the deity's agent on earth. In monotheistic faiths, like Abrahamic religions, references to God are used in constructs such as "God's Chosen People"...
", in which anyone who does not accept the teachings of Jewish monotheism
Monotheism
Monotheism is the belief in the existence of one and only one god. Monotheism is characteristic of the Baha'i Faith, Christianity, Druzism, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, Samaritanism, Sikhism and Zoroastrianism.While they profess the existence of only one deity, monotheistic religions may still...
is excluded from the messianic "world to come
World to Come
The World to Come is an eschatological phrase reflecting the belief that the "current world" is flawed or cursed and will be replaced in the future by a better world or a paradise. The concept is similar to the concepts of Heaven and the afterlife, but Heaven is another place generally seen as...
." In Christianity
Christianity
Christianity is a monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus as presented in canonical gospels and other New Testament writings...
, religious exclusivism is seen in the teachings of the Catholic Church and the teachings of several denominations that only those who adhere to the true faith will reach Heaven, while those outside of the true church will go to Hell
Hell
In many religious traditions, a hell is a place of suffering and punishment in the afterlife. Religions with a linear divine history often depict hells as endless. Religions with a cyclic history often depict a hell as an intermediary period between incarnations...
. Exclusivism is seen in Islam
Islam
Islam . The most common are and . : Arabic pronunciation varies regionally. The first vowel ranges from ~~. The second vowel ranges from ~~~...
in the acceptance of sincere Jews, Christians, and Sabians as people "of the Book" along with Muslim
Muslim
A Muslim, also spelled Moslem, is an adherent of Islam, a monotheistic, Abrahamic religion based on the Quran, which Muslims consider the verbatim word of God as revealed to prophet Muhammad. "Muslim" is the Arabic term for "submitter" .Muslims believe that God is one and incomparable...
s, but the rejection of polytheist—as well as impious Jews and Christians—as "infidel
Infidel
An infidel is one who has no religious beliefs, or who doubts or rejects the central tenets of a particular religion – especially in reference to Christianity or Islam....
s" who have no part in Allah
Allah
Allah is a word for God used in the context of Islam. In Arabic, the word means simply "God". It is used primarily by Muslims and Bahá'ís, and often, albeit not exclusively, used by Arabic-speaking Eastern Catholic Christians, Maltese Roman Catholics, Eastern Orthodox Christians, Mizrahi Jews and...
or paradise
Paradise
Paradise is a place in which existence is positive, harmonious and timeless. It is conceptually a counter-image of the miseries of human civilization, and in paradise there is only peace, prosperity, and happiness. Paradise is a place of contentment, but it is not necessarily a land of luxury and...
.
Historically, religious exclusivism sometimes leads to the justification of religious war
Religious war
A religious war; Latin: bellum sacrum; is a war caused by, or justified by, religious differences. It can involve one state with an established religion against another state with a different religion or a different sect within the same religion, or a religiously motivated group attempting to...
s, forced conversion
Religious conversion
Religious conversion is the adoption of a new religion that differs from the convert's previous religion. Changing from one denomination to another within the same religion is usually described as reaffiliation rather than conversion.People convert to a different religion for various reasons,...
s of those outside the faith, bans against inter-religious fellowship and marriage
Marriage
Marriage is a social union or legal contract between people that creates kinship. It is an institution in which interpersonal relationships, usually intimate and sexual, are acknowledged in a variety of ways, depending on the culture or subculture in which it is found...
, and the persecution of religious minorities. However, it is also possible to practice an exclusivist faith while generally respecting the rights of unbelievers, and this is often the case today. Many religions practice a modified form of exclusivism, in which other faiths are recognized as legitimate to a degree, but not as holy as the true faith.
History
War
War is a state of organized, armed, and often prolonged conflict carried on between states, nations, or other parties typified by extreme aggression, social disruption, and usually high mortality. War should be understood as an actual, intentional and widespread armed conflict between political...
on other tribes need to justify killing their enemies. Competition over land and resources may be the root cause of such conflicts, but tribal priest
Priest
A priest is a person authorized to perform the sacred rites of a religion, especially as a mediatory agent between humans and deities. They also have the authority or power to administer religious rites; in particular, rites of sacrifice to, and propitiation of, a deity or deities...
s and shamans would certainly be likely to support such battles by invoking the god of one tribe against the other.
In such a situation, the god of one tribal or national group would be proven superior in battle. Often a military defeat would be seen by the victorious side as evidence of the superiority of their god, while the defeated side would see the result as evidence of the deity's displeasure with his people. In the Bible
Bible
The Bible refers to any one of the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the individual books , their contents and their order vary among denominations...
, an example of this is seen in the cursing of the Philistine champion Goliath by David
David
David was the second king of the united Kingdom of Israel according to the Hebrew Bible and, according to the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, an ancestor of Jesus Christ through both Saint Joseph and Mary...
, who invoked the name of his deity, Yahweh
Yahweh
Yahweh is the name of God in the Bible, the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Jews and Christians.The word Yahweh is a modern scholarly convention for the Hebrew , transcribed into Roman letters as YHWH and known as the Tetragrammaton, for which the original pronunciation is unknown...
against his physically superior foe (1 Samuel 17). The Israelites celebrated David's victory over Goliath as a triumph of Yahweh; but a few years earlier, when the Israelites' Ark of the Covenant
Ark of the Covenant
The Ark of the Covenant , also known as the Ark of the Testimony, is a chest described in Book of Exodus as solely containing the Tablets of Stone on which the Ten Commandments were inscribed...
had been captured by the Philistines and placed in the temple of their god Dagon
Dagon
Dagon was originally an Assyro-Babylonian fertility god who evolved into a major northwest Semitic god, reportedly of grain and fish and/or fishing...
(1 Samuel 4), this was seen as a result of the Israelites own sin (1 Samuel 2:12-17). Similarly, in the inscription known as the Moabite Stone, King Mesha of Moab
Moab
Moab is the historical name for a mountainous strip of land in Jordan. The land lies alongside much of the eastern shore of the Dead Sea. The existence of the Kingdom of Moab is attested to by numerous archeological findings, most notably the Mesha Stele, which describes the Moabite victory over...
admits that the Moabite god Chemosh
Chemosh
Chemosh , was the god of the Moabites . The etymology of "Chemosh" is unknown. He is also known from Ebla as Kamish....
had grown angry with his people and allowed the king of Israel, Omri
Omri
Omri was a king of Israel, successful military campaigner and first in the line of Omride kings that included Ahab, Ahaziah and Joram.He was "commander of the army" of king Elah when Zimri murdered Elah and made himself king. Instead, the troops at Gibbethon chose Omri as king, and he led them to...
, to conquer Moab until Mesha restored Moabite sovereignty by making sacrifices pleasing to Chemosh.
Religious Exclusivism in Ancient Greece
The Decree of Diopithes 430 bce forbade the worship of and belief in Gods other than those of the Olympian pantheon recognised by the Athenian Polis. The introduction of other Gods was treated as asebeia or impiety and was punishable by death. The Philosophers AnaxagorasAnaxagoras
Anaxagoras was a Pre-Socratic Greek philosopher. Born in Clazomenae in Asia Minor, Anaxagoras was the first philosopher to bring philosophy from Ionia to Athens. He attempted to give a scientific account of eclipses, meteors, rainbows, and the sun, which he described as a fiery mass larger than...
, Protagoras
Protagoras
Protagoras was a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher and is numbered as one of the sophists by Plato. In his dialogue Protagoras, Plato credits him with having invented the role of the professional sophist or teacher of virtue...
, Socrates
Socrates
Socrates was a classical Greek Athenian philosopher. Credited as one of the founders of Western philosophy, he is an enigmatic figure known chiefly through the accounts of later classical writers, especially the writings of his students Plato and Xenophon, and the plays of his contemporary ...
, Stilpo
Stilpo
Stilpo was a Greek philosopher of the Megarian school. He was a contemporary of Theophrastus, Diodorus Cronus, and Crates of Thebes. None of his writings survive, he was interested in logic and dialectic, and he argued that the universal is fundamentally separated from the individual and concrete...
, Theodorus of Cyrene
Theodorus the Atheist
Theodorus the Atheist, of Cyrene, was a philosopher of the Cyrenaic school. He lived in both Greece and Alexandria, before ending his days in his native city of Cyrene. As a Cyrenaic philosopher, he taught that the goal of life was to obtain joy and avoid grief, and that the former resulted from...
, Aristotle
Aristotle
Aristotle was a Greek philosopher and polymath, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. His writings cover many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, poetry, theater, music, logic, rhetoric, linguistics, politics, government, ethics, biology, and zoology...
, and Theophrastus
Theophrastus
Theophrastus , a Greek native of Eresos in Lesbos, was the successor to Aristotle in the Peripatetic school. He came to Athens at a young age, and initially studied in Plato's school. After Plato's death he attached himself to Aristotle. Aristotle bequeathed to Theophrastus his writings, and...
were accused of impiety under this decree. Socrates was found guilty of the charge of introducing new Gods and condemned to death by drinking Hemlock.
A blessed afterlife in the realm of Elysium
Elysium
Elysium is a conception of the afterlife that evolved over time and was maintained by certain Greek religious and philosophical sects, and cults. Initially separate from Hades, admission was initially reserved for mortals related to the gods and other heroes...
was afforded only to those who had been initiated into the sacred mysteries. Those who were not initiated into the Eleusinian Mysteries
Eleusinian Mysteries
The Eleusinian Mysteries were initiation ceremonies held every year for the cult of Demeter and Persephone based at Eleusis in ancient Greece. Of all the mysteries celebrated in ancient times, these were held to be the ones of greatest importance...
were doomed to an eternity in Hades
Hades
Hades , Hadēs, originally , Haidēs or , Aidēs , meaning "the unseen") was the ancient Greek god of the underworld. The genitive , Haidou, was an elision to denote locality: "[the house/dominion] of Hades". Eventually, the nominative came to designate the abode of the dead.In Greek mythology, Hades...
, or worse Tartarus
Tartarus
In classic mythology, below Uranus , Gaia , and Pontus is Tartarus, or Tartaros . It is a deep, gloomy place, a pit, or an abyss used as a dungeon of torment and suffering that resides beneath the underworld. In the Gorgias, Plato In classic mythology, below Uranus (sky), Gaia (earth), and Pontus...
.
Happy is he among men upon earth who has seen these mysteries; but he who is uninitiate and who has no part in them, never has lot of like good things once he is dead, down in the darkness and gloom. Homeric Hymn 2 to Demeter
Antiochus IV Epiphanes
Antiochus IV Epiphanes
Antiochus IV Epiphanes ruled the Seleucid Empire from 175 BC until his death in 164 BC. He was a son of King Antiochus III the Great. His original name was Mithridates; he assumed the name Antiochus after he ascended the throne....
Selucid ruler of Israel born ca.215; died 164 bce. Antiochus decided to Hellenize the Jews by ordering the worship of Zeus
Zeus
In the ancient Greek religion, Zeus was the "Father of Gods and men" who ruled the Olympians of Mount Olympus as a father ruled the family. He was the god of sky and thunder in Greek mythology. His Roman counterpart is Jupiter and his Etruscan counterpart is Tinia.Zeus was the child of Cronus...
, when they refused Antiochus sent an army to enforce his decree.
According to Herodotus
Herodotus
Herodotus was an ancient Greek historian who was born in Halicarnassus, Caria and lived in the 5th century BC . He has been called the "Father of History", and was the first historian known to collect his materials systematically, test their accuracy to a certain extent and arrange them in a...
the Caunians a Greek people who claimed to have originated in Crete and settled in Asia Minor worshipped the Olympian Gods exclusively. "They determined that they would no longer make use of the foreign temples which had been established among them, but would worship their own old ancestral Gods alone. Then their whole youth took arms, and striking the air with their spears, marched to the Calyndic frontier, declaring that they were driving out the foreign Gods."
Plato
Plato
Plato , was a Classical Greek philosopher, mathematician, student of Socrates, writer of philosophical dialogues, and founder of the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the Western world. Along with his mentor, Socrates, and his student, Aristotle, Plato helped to lay the...
in his Laws advocates that the state should punish those who deny the existence of the Olympian Gods or believe that the Gods exist but think they are indifferent to mankind or can be easily bought by bribes.
Interpretatio graeca
Interpretatio graeca
Interpretatio graeca is a Latin term for the common tendency of ancient Greek writers to equate foreign divinities to members of their own pantheon. Herodotus, for example, refers to the ancient Egyptian gods Amon, Osiris and Ptah as "Zeus", "Dionysus" and "Hephaestus", respectively.-Roman...
the common tendency of ancient Greek writers to identify foreign divinities with members of their own pantheon, can be seen as a kind of exclusivism. The Syncretism
Syncretism
Syncretism is the combining of different beliefs, often while melding practices of various schools of thought. The term means "combining", but see below for the origin of the word...
of the Hellenistic period whereby aspects of the cults of foreign Gods such as iconography and epithets were assimilated, can also be seen as a kind of exclusivism
Exclusivism
Excluvisism is the practice of being exclusive; mentality characterized by the disregard for opinions and ideas other than one's own, or the practice of organizing entities into groups by excluding those entities which possess certain traits like Christopher Columbus..-Religious...
.
Israelite and Jewish exclusivism
Early in Israel's history, YahwehYahweh
Yahweh is the name of God in the Bible, the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Jews and Christians.The word Yahweh is a modern scholarly convention for the Hebrew , transcribed into Roman letters as YHWH and known as the Tetragrammaton, for which the original pronunciation is unknown...
was seen as the God of the Israelites, but other gods were recognized as existing for their particular peoples. The prophet Michah (4:5) states, for example: "All the nations may walk in the name of their gods; we will walk in the name of Yahweh our god for ever and ever." The Israelites were chosen by Yahweh to occupy Canaan
Canaan
Canaan is a historical region roughly corresponding to modern-day Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, and the western parts of Jordan...
and establish a special tradition as "a kingdom of priests and holy nation." Other deities belonged to other peoples', but the Israelites were to worship Yahweh alone. Yahweh was not simply the only god for the Israelites, He was also the greatest of all the gods as far as the Israelites were concerned:
Who among the gods is like you, O Yahweh? Who is like you—majestic in holiness, awesome in glory, working wonders?" (Exod. 15:11)
This sense of superiority of one's national deity may well have been the attitude of most of the Canaanite peoples toward their gods. However, in Israel's case, Yahweh was unique, in that He could not be represented by any image, icon
Icon
An icon is a religious work of art, most commonly a painting, from Eastern Christianity and in certain Eastern Catholic churches...
, or idol
Cult image
In the practice of religion, a cult image is a human-made object that is venerated for the deity, spirit or daemon that it embodies or represents...
. The prophetic campaign against idolatry
Idolatry
Idolatry is a pejorative term for the worship of an idol, a physical object such as a cult image, as a god, or practices believed to verge on worship, such as giving undue honour and regard to created forms other than God. In all the Abrahamic religions idolatry is strongly forbidden, although...
also translated into the idea that the deities of other peoples were not true gods at all; thus Yahweh alone is God. By the time of the prophet Jeremiah
Jeremiah
Jeremiah Hebrew：יִרְמְיָה , Modern Hebrew:Yirməyāhū, IPA: jirməˈjaːhu, Tiberian:Yirmĭyahu, Greek:Ἰερεμίας), meaning "Yahweh exalts", or called the "Weeping prophet" was one of the main prophets of the Hebrew Bible...
in the late seventh century BCE, we find: "Your children have forsaken me and sworn by gods that are not gods" (Jeremiah 5) and, "Do men make their own gods? Yes, but they are not gods!" (Jeremiah 16:20).
The fusion of monotheism
Monotheism
Monotheism is the belief in the existence of one and only one god. Monotheism is characteristic of the Baha'i Faith, Christianity, Druzism, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, Samaritanism, Sikhism and Zoroastrianism.While they profess the existence of only one deity, monotheistic religions may still...
with the concept of the Chosen People brought the development of an intolerant form of exclusivism to its logical conclusion. Not only was one people's god superior to another's; not only was this deity superior to all other gods; but he was in reality the only god which exists. Although he is the creator of all people, those who do not recognize and obey him in a certain way are excluded from His blessings.
This exclusivist tendency was softened in later Jewish tradition by teachings such as those found in the Book of Isaiah
Book of Isaiah
The Book of Isaiah is the first of the Latter Prophets in the Hebrew Bible, preceding the books of Ezekiel, Jeremiah and the Book of the Twelve...
, in which Israel will become a "light to the nations," so that not only Jews but Gentiles too would participate in the future messianic kingdom. This universalizing trend, however, implied a doctrine related to exclusivism, namely triumphalism
Triumphalism
Triumphalism is the attitude or belief that a particular doctrine, religion, culture, or social system is superior to and should triumph over all others...
. In this teaching, those normally excluded are granted a degree of inclusion through their acceptance of the true faith, or acceptance of minimal conditions associated with the faith.
Christian exclusivism
Christianity has taught from the time of its earliest writings that Jesus is the only way to JehovahJehovah
Jehovah is an anglicized representation of Hebrew , a vocalization of the Tetragrammaton , the proper name of the God of Israel in the Hebrew Bible....
the God of Israel. In John 14:6, he is recorded as saying "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father, but by me." It may seem from these particularist statements that the authors wanted to imply that Jesus intended to describe himself as the exclusive path to God. Paul, the first Christian writer, taught that "all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God" (Romans 6:23) and "there is none righteous, not even one" (Romans 3:10). For Paul, salvation
Salvation
Within religion salvation is the phenomenon of being saved from the undesirable condition of bondage or suffering experienced by the psyche or soul that has arisen as a result of unskillful or immoral actions generically referred to as sins. Salvation may also be called "deliverance" or...
lay in faith in Jesus' death and resurrection
Resurrection
Resurrection refers to the literal coming back to life of the biologically dead. It is used both with respect to particular individuals or the belief in a General Resurrection of the dead at the end of the world. The General Resurrection is featured prominently in Jewish, Christian, and Muslim...
alone; and not even diligent obedience to the Law of Moses
613 mitzvot
The 613 commandments is a numbering of the statements and principles of law, ethics, and spiritual practice contained in the Torah or Five Books of Moses...
or other good works of charity and morality could bring about Christian salvation. In 2 Thessalonians 1:8-9 Paul taught that when Christ returns, he will mete out "retribution to those who do not know God and to those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. And these will pay the penalty of eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of His power."
Acts 4:12 quotes Peter
Saint Peter
Saint Peter or Simon Peter was an early Christian leader, who is featured prominently in the New Testament Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles. The son of John or of Jonah and from the village of Bethsaida in the province of Galilee, his brother Andrew was also an apostle...
, Jesus' chief disciple, as declaring: "There is salvation in no one else; for there is no other name under heaven that has been given among men, by which we must be saved." Such statements, as with John 14:6, can be made to imply an exclusivistic message if taken in an absolute sense.
While biblical quotations may be cited giving a more inclusivistic and universalistic perspective on salvation, the fact remains that throughout most of Church history, the state religion of the later Roman Empire, later to become the Orthodox Church and the Catholic Church, taught that only through membership of the state church could one be saved. This has been formulated as 'Extra Ecclesiam Nulla Salus' outside the church there is no salvation. Church Fathers
Church Fathers
The Church Fathers, Early Church Fathers, Christian Fathers, or Fathers of the Church were early and influential theologians, eminent Christian teachers and great bishops. Their scholarly works were used as a precedent for centuries to come...
such as Origen
Origen
Origen , or Origen Adamantius, 184/5–253/4, was an early Christian Alexandrian scholar and theologian, and one of the most distinguished writers of the early Church. As early as the fourth century, his orthodoxy was suspect, in part because he believed in the pre-existence of souls...
were marginalised in teaching a universal salvation in which everyone would ultimately come to God. The official view was that orthodox Christians alone would be saved, and any who failed to come to the church while they were alive on earth would be doomed to eternal damnation.
Paganism
Paganism is a blanket term, typically used to refer to non-Abrahamic, indigenous polytheistic religious traditions....
, and even Jews
Jews
The Jews , also known as the Jewish people, are a nation and ethnoreligious group originating in the Israelites or Hebrews of the Ancient Near East. The Jewish ethnicity, nationality, and religion are strongly interrelated, as Judaism is the traditional faith of the Jewish nation...
with the objective of either bringing them to God or preventing the spread of false teachings among Christians. The Protestant Reformation
Protestant Reformation
The Protestant Reformation was a 16th-century split within Western Christianity initiated by Martin Luther, John Calvin and other early Protestants. The efforts of the self-described "reformers", who objected to the doctrines, rituals and ecclesiastical structure of the Roman Catholic Church, led...
did not stop the basic attitude of Christian exclusivism, as Protestants declared that Catholics were bound for Hell
Hell
In many religious traditions, a hell is a place of suffering and punishment in the afterlife. Religions with a linear divine history often depict hells as endless. Religions with a cyclic history often depict a hell as an intermediary period between incarnations...
and vice versa. Even toward fellow Protestants, an exclusivistic attitude was often adopted, and specific Protestant doctrines were deemed essential by some and heretical by others.
After more than a century of religious war, by the late seventeenth century, an attitude of political toleration
Toleration
Toleration is "the practice of deliberately allowing or permitting a thing of which one disapproves. One can meaningfully speak of tolerating, ie of allowing or permitting, only if one is in a position to disallow”. It has also been defined as "to bear or endure" or "to nourish, sustain or preserve"...
began to emerge, notably through the writings of John Locke
John Locke
John Locke FRS , widely known as the Father of Liberalism, was an English philosopher and physician regarded as one of the most influential of Enlightenment thinkers. Considered one of the first of the British empiricists, following the tradition of Francis Bacon, he is equally important to social...
, who taught that civil authorities should not interfere in matters of religious conscience. This political attitude also spread to some—though by no means all—religious institutions. By the nineteenth centuries, several denominations relaxed their attitudes of exclusivism and some began expressing a more universalistic theology of salvation. In the twentieth century, the Ecumenical Movement promoted cooperation and mutual understanding within Christianity, based on the ideal of mutual acceptance and inter-communion. Several major denominations lowered barriers and welcomed members of other Christian faiths to share the sacraments with them. Some even extended this universalism to include adherents of non-Christian religions into the ranks of those who could be accepted by God.
Islamic exclusivism
Islam began its history with an exclusivist attitude toward polytheist religions, but an inclusivist attitude toward Christians and Jews. As people "of the Book," believers in the oneness of God were given the status of dimmi, conferring on them certain rights, including the right to practice their religions openly and not to be pressured to accept IslamIslam
Islam . The most common are and . : Arabic pronunciation varies regionally. The first vowel ranges from ~~. The second vowel ranges from ~~~...
.
In practice, however, neither the inclusion of Jews and Christians nor militant exclusivism toward "pagans" was always practiced. Christians were accused of idolatry
Idolatry
Idolatry is a pejorative term for the worship of an idol, a physical object such as a cult image, as a god, or practices believed to verge on worship, such as giving undue honour and regard to created forms other than God. In all the Abrahamic religions idolatry is strongly forbidden, although...
because of their veneration of icon
Icon
An icon is a religious work of art, most commonly a painting, from Eastern Christianity and in certain Eastern Catholic churches...
s and were also sometimes treated as polytheists because of the doctrines of the Trinity
Trinity
The Christian doctrine of the Trinity defines God as three divine persons : the Father, the Son , and the Holy Spirit. The three persons are distinct yet coexist in unity, and are co-equal, co-eternal and consubstantial . Put another way, the three persons of the Trinity are of one being...
and the Incarnation
Incarnation
Incarnation literally means embodied in flesh or taking on flesh. It refers to the conception and birth of a sentient creature who is the material manifestation of an entity, god or force whose original nature is immaterial....
. As strict monotheists, Jews generally fared better than Christians under Islamic rule, but also sometimes experienced persecution. On the other hand, Islamic rulers often considered it prudent to tolerate non-Judeo-Christian religions such a Hinduism
Hinduism
Hinduism is the predominant and indigenous religious tradition of the Indian Subcontinent. Hinduism is known to its followers as , amongst many other expressions...
and Buddhism
Buddhism
Buddhism is a religion and philosophy encompassing a variety of traditions, beliefs and practices, largely based on teachings attributed to Siddhartha Gautama, commonly known as the Buddha . The Buddha lived and taught in the northeastern Indian subcontinent some time between the 6th and 4th...
, especially in areas where these faiths constituted a substantial minority population under Islamic sovereignty.
The basic attitude of Islam toward other religions remains unchanged today, but it should be noted that certain Islamic nations, such as Saudi Arabia
Saudi Arabia
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia , commonly known in British English as Saudi Arabia and in Arabic as as-Sa‘ūdiyyah , is the largest state in Western Asia by land area, constituting the bulk of the Arabian Peninsula, and the second-largest in the Arab World...
and Iran
Iran
Iran , officially the Islamic Republic of Iran , is a country in Southern and Western Asia. The name "Iran" has been in use natively since the Sassanian era and came into use internationally in 1935, before which the country was known to the Western world as Persia...
, are more exclusivistic toward other religions than are others, such as Indonesia
Indonesia
Indonesia , officially the Republic of Indonesia , is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania. Indonesia is an archipelago comprising approximately 13,000 islands. It has 33 provinces with over 238 million people, and is the world's fourth most populous country. Indonesia is a republic, with an...
and Egypt
Egypt
Egypt , officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, Arabic: , is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Southwest Asia. Egypt is thus a transcontinental country, and a major power in Africa, the Mediterranean Basin, the Middle East and the Muslim world...
. In addition, Islamic fundamentalist groups strongly oppose the relaxation of Islamic exclusivism, seeking instead a return to the strict standards they believe are taught in Islamic tradition.
Other forms of religious exclusivism
Buddhist religious exclusivism may be seen in the implication that those who do not accept the teachings of the Buddha, such as the Eightfold Path, are destined to repeat the cycle of suffering through endless reincarnations; while those who practice the true way can reach enlightenment. Neo-Buddhist groups sometimes consider their tradition the true path to enlightenment and engage in strong evangelical efforts to influence those they consider to be in darkness. Several sects associated with Nichiren BuddhismNichiren Buddhism
Nichiren Buddhism is a branch of Mahāyāna Buddhism based on the teachings of the 13th century Japanese monk Nichiren...
may be included in this category.
Many followers of Eastern religion
Eastern religion
This article is about far east and Indian religions. For other eastern religions see: Eastern_world#Eastern_cultureEastern religions refers to religions originating in the Eastern world —India, China, Japan and Southeast Asia —and thus having dissimilarities with Western religions...
s are not exclusivist though. For example, there are millions of Buddhists
Buddhism
Buddhism is a religion and philosophy encompassing a variety of traditions, beliefs and practices, largely based on teachings attributed to Siddhartha Gautama, commonly known as the Buddha . The Buddha lived and taught in the northeastern Indian subcontinent some time between the 6th and 4th...
who would also consider themselves to follow Confucianism
Confucianism
Confucianism is a Chinese ethical and philosophical system developed from the teachings of the Chinese philosopher Confucius . Confucianism originated as an "ethical-sociopolitical teaching" during the Spring and Autumn Period, but later developed metaphysical and cosmological elements in the Han...
or Taoism
Taoism
Taoism refers to a philosophical or religious tradition in which the basic concept is to establish harmony with the Tao , which is the mechanism of everything that exists...
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