Muslims who hold their religious beliefs as rational face a philosophical puzzle: how to affirm the truth of Islam while acknowledging that people of other faiths may also be saved. This project develops a new Islamic theory of religious knowledge that navigates between two extremes—the demand for hard evidence and the view that belief needs no justification at all. The problem is that existing philosophical frameworks for religious belief were built largely within Western Christian thought. They do not fully capture how reason, revelation, and personal disposition interact in Islamic tradition. Without an Islamic epistemology grounded in its own sources, Muslim thinkers lack a rigorous way to defend the rationality of their beliefs in a diverse society. If successful, this research would offer a coherent Islamic response to religious diversity—one that avoids both rigid exclusivism and the claim that all religions are equally true. It could reshape how Islamic theology engages with contemporary philosophy of religion, providing scholars and religious communities with a reasoned framework for pluralistic coexistence.
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ERD-NIP aims to establish a conceptually coherent and philosophically rigorous view that makes sense in a global, diverse society, by defending cognitive and dispositional aspects of religious belief, and Islamic belief in particular, while emphasizing its compatibility with epistemic and salvific inclusivism. ERD-NIP addresses the issue of what kind of religious epistemology would better ground the rationality of religious belief. It aims to develop a tenable religious epistemology as a midway between theistic evidentialism and reformed epistemology based on Thomas Reid's moderate foundationalism. However, the main breakthrough of ERD-NIP is to take the discussions to an Islamic context by developing the Reidian alternative religious epistemology based on an Islamic perspective and by offering an Islamic response to religious diversity on this epistemological ground in light of the following research questions: What is the connection between reason, belief, and revelation in Islam in forming one's religious attitude and judging the truth of Islamic beliefs? Which approaches to religious epistemology can be identified in the Islamic tradition as corresponding to contemporary theories and to which extent do they fall short of grounding the rationality of religious belief? How can we develop a new Islamic theory to ground rationality of religious belief in the most satisfying way? What kind of response can this new theory offer to religious diversity as a midway between religious pluralism and exclusivism? How can this new Islamic theory accommodate epistemic and salvific inclusivism without opposing the principle of logical contradiction? ERD-NIP aims to establish a rational Islamic epistemological foundation to respond to religious diversity from an Islamically inclusivist perspective, by a thorough analysis of the Islamic sources and bringing them into conversation with the conversation with the contemporary philosophy religion discussions.
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