ABSTRACT
This chapter introduces the core theoretical ideas of critical realism and Islamic critical realism (ICR). It explains how the critical realist philosophical fulcrum of ontological realism, epistemological relativism and judgmental rationality provides a comprehensive and enriching interpretative framework that can underscore and nurture a 'serious' approach to Islam and, by extension, other religious traditions. The chapter describes the necessary conceptual tools of original ICR at the first dialectical moment of 1M of 'being-as-such' and 'being-as-non-identity'. It claims that this work of 'underlabouring' by the fulcrum of ICR can set up the conditions for young Muslims to develop an authentically Islamic, peaceful and transformatively engaged attitude to life in a multi-faith world. Judgmental rationality is itself constellationally embedded in epistemological relativism in the same way that epistemological relativism is embedded in ontological realism. Judgmental rationality, like epistemological relativism, is, therefore, grounded in and bounded by our situatedness and our geohistoricity.
