Encountering Diversity
Abstract
This essay justifies the imperative of adopting civil, lenient attitudes toward members of other communities, whether religious or professional. It begins to integrate certain historically male- or female-dominated knowledge traditions. It analyzes two areas of inquiry into the human past—memory and acts of remembering and paleo-history narration and modes of epistemic trust. It compares certain truth claims, observing where they contradict or overlap. It finds that appearances of fundamental disagreement shrink significantly with adoption of a pluralist ethic. It argues that Muslim women have profound but underrated capabilities to make these understandings resonate across human communities everywhere.