Here is the English abstract of Dr.Rezvaneh Dastjani Farahanii (Post-doc Researcher, Hakim Sabzevari University, Sabzevar, Iran)'s presentation at the 9^nd pre-con meeting of the conference “Imam Reza (PBUH) and Interreligious Dialogue" which was held in Hakim Sabzevari University Sabzevar, Iran on  December 12, 2023.

The Relationships between Holy Books Based on Hadith of the Fourfold Divisions of the Quran and Re-understanding Its Role in Interreligious Dialogue by Emphasis on the Holy Quran

Interfaith dialogue is essentially a shared, constructive, and positive interaction between people of different religious traditions. It helps to promote understanding between different religions. The three major religions of the world, Islam, Christianity, and Judaism, are based on the three books of the Quran, the Torah, and the Gospel. The books of the heavenly religions, each of which contains the fundamental principles of these three religions, play an important role in shaping interfaith dialogues. Although the existing holy books of the Jews and Christians have been distorted, they can still be considered to contain parts of God's words. Therefore, it is possible to engage in dialogue and debate with religions by using them. Now, we must see how much this provides the possibility of dialogue and understanding between the followers of the world's religions. In this context, the Hadith of the fourfold divisions of the Quran presents one of the tools of interfaith dialogue, namely the holy book. In this Hadith, different parts of the Quran are correlated with the divine books. This Hadith, in terms of content, contains chapters that are named under a general heading and each group corresponds to one of the previous holy books; The Ṭawāl (long) chapters instead of the Torah, Meʾūn (hundreds) chapters in place of the Gospel, the Mathānī (in pairs) chapters in place of the Zabur, and Mofaṣṣal (detailed) chapters which are the privilege for Prophet Mohammad. This research, in order to answer the question of the position of the Quran and the heavenly books in interfaith dialogue based on this narrative, has used the traditional method of fiqh al-hadith (the science of the rules of hadith) and content analysis, and has concluded that this Hadith is from the point of view of authenticity and Rijāl (biographical evaluation) in the category of authentic hadiths, and from the point of view of signification, shows the Holy Quran dominates other divine books. In interfaith dialogue, the same corresponding chapters can be used for dialogue with the followers of different religions based on their holy books.

Translator: Mahdi Qasemi