Islam
is portrayed sometimes as if it were a monolithic or uni-dimensional
entity. Islam is undoubtedly the faith of transcendental monotheism
, the belief in Allah (the one and only God), who transcends both
man and nature. But monotheism does not lead to monism (the
metaphysical doctrine that existence is a whole and one); on the
contrary, it leads to pluralism and diversity. For from a strictly
Islamic point of view, except for God, everything else exists in
variety. Therefore, there is not one single Islamic discourse, but
rather a variety of discourses that manifest various endeavors , or ijtihad,
(personal reasoning) of the Muslim mind, within the boundaries of
time and place, to understand the world and to interpret the Qur'an.
