Abstract

This articles sets out to investigate the historical and modern meaning ofpluralism, its functions, and its limitations. In the first section, there is ahistorical and etymological study of pluralism and its various kindscomprising religious, philosophical, political, cultural, and social. Thesecond section deals with lexical and expressional meaning of religion sealof prophet hood, and history from the viewpoints of Islam with reference tothe verses of the Holy Qur’an along with Mulla Sadra ideas. Finally, in thethird section, there is an investigation of the lexical meaning of parallelismand its difference with pluralism and a clarification of the misunderstandingsexisting between these two.Types of pluralism and their meaning:1. Philosophical pluralism in which there is the belief is the belief inthe multiplicity of the sources of the word.2. Religious pluralism which deals with the parallel truth of all Divineand non-divine religions.3. Political pluralism which takes into account the participation of allpolitical groups in determining their destiny and their collaboration ingovernment.4. Cultural and social pluralism which puts its focus on establishinginstitutions independent from government and institutionalization of theseorganizations. The result of this is that in a civil society a simple and fastmechanism in relation to the activities of the government and people isproduced so that power will not be the monopoly of a certain individual