What is anti-Semitism? The Definition of Anti-Semitism is the first book-length study to explore this central question in the context of the new anti-Semitism. Previous efforts to define 'anti-Semitism' have been complicated by the disreputable origins of the term, the discredited sources of its etymology, the diverse manifestations of the concept, and the contested politics of its applications. Nevertheless the task is an important one, not only because definitional clarity is required for the term to be understood, but also because the current conceptual confusion prevents resolution of many incidents in which anti-Semitism is manifested. The Definition of Anti-Semitism explores the various ways in which anti-Semitism has historically been defined, demonstrates the weaknesses in prior efforts, and develops a new definition of anti-Semitism, especially in the context of the 'new anti-Semitism' in American higher education.

This is an introduction to the World's major religions from a Catholic Perspective. There is no single standard textbook that outlines the official Roman Catholic theological position in relation to other religions which then explicates this orientation theologically and phenomenologically in relation to the four main religions of the world and the flowering of new religious movements in the west. The present project will cover this serious gap in the literature. After outlining the teaching of Vatican II and the magisterium since then (chapter one), each subsequent chapter will be divided equally between: an exposition of the history and features of the religion or movement being studied; and a serious theological analysis of these features, showing how these religions do have elements in common, as well as how they differ in fundamental ways from Catholicism.

In this biography Nico J.G. Kaptein studies the life and times of Sayyid 'Uthman (1822-1914), the most prominent Muslim scholar of his era in the Netherlands East Indies. During his long career, he provided guidance to the Muslim community and from 1889 onwards simultaneously served the colonial government as advisor for Muslim affairs after the famous C. Snouck Hurgronje had engaged him. Based on an analysis of his writings, Kaptein focuses on the question of how Sayyid 'Uthman viewed the place of Islam in the colonial state and the many reactions this provoked, both nationally and internationally, e.g. from the Cairo-based reformist Rashid Rida. For an online exhibition on "Sayyid 'Uthman of Batavia (1822-1914): A Life in the Service of Islam and Colonial Rule", see: http://www.library.leiden.edu/special-collections/special/sayyid-uthman-exhibition-now-online.html

"Thinking the Divine in Interreligious Encounter "seeks to take seriously our questions of cross-cultural and inter-religious dialogue on God or the Divine: How can the Divine be named and thought as Europe finds itself in midst of cross-cultural processes of a global nature and as religions such as Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism come into the foreground in the West? What are some of the major shifts in Christian theology, as it recognizes that peoples of non-Christian faith traditions name and think the Divine in ways that differ from and sometimes conflict with Europe's dominant religion(s) and secular culture? Together with "Naming and Thinking God in Europe Today" and "Post-colonial Europe in the Crucible of Cultures" (Rodopi 2007), this volume allows us to discover opportunities for a multivalenced reflection on God or the Divine that achieves mutual intelligibility without surrendering to a dogmatic untranslatability or a crude relativism.

In The Second Jewish Revolt: The Bar Kokhba War, 132-136 C.E., Menahem Mor offers a detailed account on the Bar Kokhba Revolt in an attempt to understand the second revolt against the Romans. Since the Bar Kokhba Revolt did not have a historian who devoted a comprehensive book to the event, Mor used a variety of historical materials including literary sources (Jewish, Christian, Greek and Latin) and archaeological sources (inscriptions, coins, military diplomas, hideouts, and refuge complexes). The book reviews the causes for the outbreak while explaining the complexity of the territorial expansion of the Revolt. Mor portrays the participants and opponents as well as the attitudes of the non-Jewish population in Palestine. He exposes the Roman Army's part in Judaea, the Jewish leadership and the implications of the Revolt.

This Annual Review of the Sociology of Religion contributes cases of encounters, diversities and distances to an emerging Jewish-Muslim Studies field. The scholarly essays address both discourses about and lived experiences of minorities in contemporary French, German and UK cities. The authors explore how particular modes of governance and secularism shape individual and collective identities while new technologies re-make interfaith encounters. This volume shows that Middle Eastern and North African pasts and presents weigh on European realities, examines how the pull of Jewish intellectual history is felt by a new generation of Muslim scholars and activists, and uncovers how Orthodox communities negotiate living side by side.

The essays collected here, prepared by a think tank of the Elijah Interfaith Academy, explore the challenges associated with sharing wisdom-learning, teachings, messages for good living-between members of different faith traditions. In a globalized age, when food, music, and dress are shared freely, how should religions go about sharing their wisdom? The essays, representing six faith traditions (Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist), explore what wisdom means in each of these traditions, why it should be shared-internally and externally-and how it should be shared. A primary concern is the form of appropriate sharing, so that the wisdom of the specific tradition maintains its integrity in the process of sharing. Authors reflect on specific wisdoms their tradition has or should share, as well as what it has to receive from other faiths. Special emphasis is placed on the themes of love and forgiveness and how these illustrate the principles of common sharing. Love and humility emerge as strong motivators for sharing wisdom and for doing so in a way that respects the tradition from which the wisdom comes as well as the recipient. This book offers a theory that can enrich ongoing encounters between members of faith traditions by suggesting a tradition-based practice of sharing the wisdom of traditions, while preserving the integrity of the teaching and respecting the identity of the one with whom wisdom is shared.

For centuries Christians and Muslims have engaged with each other in manifold ways, peaceful and otherwise, be it in scholarly study, or in war and colonization. Today, Christians represent an influential body of opinion that largely perceives Islam, post 9/11, as a threat. Yet Muslims represent approximately one third of the world's population. Improved understanding between Christians and Muslims is therefore crucial and a prerequisite for universal peace and justice. This book aims to investigate Islam's place in the world, Muslim aspirations vis-a-vis non-Muslims and the realities of how Muslims are perceived and how they perceive others. Each chapter analyses accessible texts from central thinkers and commentators, broadly split into two camps: confrontational or conciliatory. Christian-Muslim relations are set in the wider context of civilizational, geo-political and economic interaction between the Muslim world and the historically Christian West.

Recent years have witnessed the emergence of a virtual cottage industry in all things ''Abrahamic.'' Directly proportionate to the rise of religious exclusivism, perhaps best epitomized by the attacks of 9/11 and the problems now plaguing the Middle East and Afghanistan, there has been a real desire both to find and map a set of commonalities between Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. This is often done, however, for the sake of interfaith dialogue, rather than scholarship. Recently, however, the term "Abrahamic religions" has been used with exceeding frequency in the academy. We now regularly encounter academic books, conferences, and even positions (including endowed chairs) devoted to the so-called "Abrahamic religions." But what exactly are "Abrahamic religions"? Although many perceive him as the common denominator of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, Abraham remains deceptively out of reach. An ahistorical figure, some contend he holds the seeds for historical reconciliation. Touted as symbol of ecumenicism, Abraham can just as easily function as one of division and exclusivity. Like our understanding of Abraham, the category "Abrahamic religions" is vague and nebulous. Usually lost in contemporary discussions is a set of crucial questions: Whence does the term "Abrahamic religions" derive? Who created it and for what purposes? What sort of intellectual work is it perceived to perform? In order to answer these and related questions, Aaron Hughes examines the creation and dissemination of this category in Abrahamic Religions. Part genealogical and part analytical, his study seeks to raise and answer questions about the appropriateness and usefulness of employing "Abrahamic religions" as a vehicle for understanding and classifying data. In so doing, this monograph can be taken as a case study that examines the construction of categories within the academic study of religion, showing how the categories we employ can become more an impediment than an expedient to understanding.

"This is an excellent and rare exploration of a sensitive religious issue from many perspectives - legal, cultural and political. The case studies from Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand portray the important and exciting, yet very difficult, negotiation of Islamic teachings in the changing realities of Southeast Asia, home to the majority of Muslims in the world. Interreligious marriage is an important indicator of good relations between communities in religiously diverse countries. This book will also be of great interest to students and scholars of religious pluralism in a Southeast Asian context, which has not been studied adequately." - Zainal Abidin Bagir, Executive Director, Center for Religious and Cross-cultural Studies (CRCS), Gadjah Mada University, Indonesia "The issue of Muslim-non-Muslim marriages has different connotations in the different Southeast Asian states. For example, in Thailand it is more a fluid cultural issue but in Malaysia it reflects great racial schisms with severe legal implications. This book is a welcome one as it examines the issue not only from the perspectives of various Southeast Asian nations but also from so many angles; the legal, historical, social, cultural, anthropological and philosophical. The work is scholarly, yet accessible. Underlying it, there is a vital streak of humanism." - Azmi Sharom, Associate Professor, Faculty of Law, University of Malaya

Using the events surrounding "The Satanic Verses" controversy as a starting point, Paul Weller offers an interesting examination of the twenty-first century challenges posed by living with radical difference, freedom of expression, and mutual respect.26th September 2008 marks the twentieth anniversary of the beginning of "The Satanic Verses" controversy - a controversy that in many ways became paradigmatic for the following two decades.Taking as its starting-point the opening two years of the controversy, Paul Weller uses the events and arguments of those years as a lens through which to view what later developed, both in relation to the controversy itself, but also its wider entails, and the incidents and issues through which aspects of the original controversy were reprised. The anniversary of the controversy presents a good opportunity to review the incidents, issues and debates of the time in some historical perspective, while also connecting them with subsequent incidents that have reprised some of the key themes, such as the 'cartoons' controversy, the terror attacks of 9/11 and 7/7, and the killing of the Dutch filmmaker, Theo Van Gogh.The book holds up a mirror for our times that will be of interest to academics, politicians, students, and religious believers, as well as to all who are engaged with the twenty-first century challenges posed by living with radical difference, freedom of expression, and mutual respect, with exploring the relationship between religion and secularity, and with overcoming the threats posed by religiously informed violence. Paul Weller is Professor of Inter-Religious Relations at the University of Derby and Visiting Fellow in the Oxford Centre for Christianity and Culture at Regent's Park College, University of Oxford, UK. He is editor of "Religions in the UK: Directory 2007-10", the 2001 edition of which won the Shap Working Party on World Religions in Education prize for 'an outstanding contribution to the teaching of world religions'.

al-Radd al-jamil attributed to al-Ghazali (d. 1111) is the most extensive and detailed refutation of the divinity of Jesus by a Muslim author in the classical period of Islam. Since the discovery of the manuscript in the 1930's scholars have debated whether the great Muslim theologian al-Ghazali was really the author. This is a new critical edition of the Arabic text and the first complete English translation. The introduction situates this work in the history of Muslim anti-Christian polemical writing. Mark Beaumont and Maha El Kaisy-Friemuth argue that this refutation comes from an admirer of al-Ghazali who sought to advance some of his key ideas for an Egyptian audience.

Exploration, trade and conquest expanded and upset traditional worldviews of early modern Europeans. Christians saw themselves confronted with a largely heathen world. In the wake of Iberian colonization, Jesuits successfully christianized heathen populations overseas. In his De conversione Indorum et gentilium, Johannes Hoornbeeck presents a systematic overview of every aspect of the missionary imperative from a Reformed Protestant perspective. The most attractive part of his book may be the global survey it offers of the various types of heathens, an early example of comparative religion. Of equal interest, however, is his critical approach to mission. Hoornbeeck rejects ecclesiastical hierarchy and top-down imposition of Christianity. In this he is perfectly orthodox, and at the same time startlingly original and a harbinger of modern missions. His practical recommendations offer a flexible framework for missionaries, to fit a wide variety of circumstances.

Encounters between people of diverse religious faiths and worldviews are becoming more common in an increasingly globalized and mobile world. Research has not, however, kept pace by investigating how people talk about their faith with others who believe differently. This monograph addresses that deficit by taking an emergent path, combining qualitative and quantitative analysis to investigate and understand multilingual speakers' discursive behaviors in multiparty interreligious dialogues. Using 33 hours of recordings from conversations across seven research sites, Sauer Bredvik investigates how speakers' multilanguaging practices interact with other indexical and referential signs (unfilled pauses, disfluency, pragmatic markers) to affect how constitute messages are understood. By combining corpus-assisted discourse analysis with emic data taken from observation and 11 hours of participant interviews, one is able to identify distinct patterns of use between these metalinguistic indicators and a dialogue outcome. Readers will gain an understanding of how people of various linguistic and faith backgrounds use all their semiotic resources to display hospitality and respect for the Other in multilingual, multifaith settings.

Christian-Jewish relations have had changing fortunes throughout the centuries. Occasionally there has been peace and even mutual understanding, but usually these relations have been ones of tension, often involving recrimination and even violence. This volume addresses a number of the major questions that have been at the heart and the periphery of these tenuous relations through the years. The volume begins with a number of papers discussing relations as Christianity emerged from and defined itself in terms of Judaism. Other papers trace the relations through the intervening years. And a number of papers confront issues that have been at the heart of the troubled twentieth century. In all, these papers address a sensitive yet vital set of issues from a variety of approaches and perspectives, becoming in their own way a part of the ongoing dialogue.>

Christian-Muslim Relations, a Bibliographical History 12 (CMR 12) covering the Middle East, South and Southeast Asia, Africa and the Americas in the period 1700-1800 is a further volume in a general history of relations between the two faiths from the 7th century to the early 20th century. It comprises a series of introductory essays and also the main body of detailed entries which treat all the works, surviving or lost, that have been recorded. These entries provide biographical details of the authors, descriptions and assessments of the works themselves, and complete accounts of manuscripts, editions, translations and studies. The result of collaboration between numerous leading scholars, CMR 12, along with the other volumes in this series, is intended as a basic tool for research in Christian-Muslim relations. Section Editors: Clinton Bennett, Luis F. Bernabe Pons, Jaco Beyers, Emanuele Colombo, Karoline Cook, Sinead Cussen, Lejla Demiri, Martha Frederiks, David D. Grafton, Stanislaw Grodz, Alan Guenther, Emma Gaze Loghin, Gordon Nickel, Claire Norton, Reza Pourjavady, Douglas Pratt, Radu Paun, Charles Ramsey, Peter Riddell, Umar Ryad, Mehdi Sajid, Cornelia Soldat, Karel Steenbrink, Ann Thomson, Carsten Walbiner

Contemporary Muslim-Christian Encounters: Developments, Diversity and Dialogues addresses the key issues in the present day global encounter between Christians and Muslims. Divided into two parts, the first examines theoretical issues and concerns which affect dialogue between the two traditions. The second part highlights case studies from around the world. Chapters come from established scholars including Reuven Firestone, Douglas Pratt and Clinton Bennett, emerging scholars, as well as practitioner perspectives. Highlighting the diversity within the field of "Christian-Muslim" encounter, case studies cover examples from the US and globally, and include dialogue in the US post 9/11, Nigerian Muslims and Christians, and Christian responses to Islamophobia in the UK. Covering unique areas and those not explored in detail elsewhere, Contemporary Muslim-Christian Encounters: Developments, Diversity and Dialogues will be of interest to advanced students, researchers, and interfaith professionals.

This book inquires as to whether theological dialogue between Christians and Jews is possible, not only in itself but also as regards the emergence of communities of Messianic Judaism. In light of David Novak's insights, Matthew Levering proposes that Christian theological responses to supersessionism need to preserve both the Church's development of doctrine and Rabbinic Judaism's ability to define its own boundaries.
The book undertakes constructive philosophical theology in dialogue with Novak. Exploring the interrelated doctrines of divine providence/theonomy, the image of God, and natural law, Levering places Novak's work in conversation especially with Thomas Aquinas, whose approach fosters a rich dialogue with Novak's broadly Maimonidean perspective. It focuses upon the relationship of human beings to the Creator, with attention to the philosophical entailments of Jewish and Christian covenantal commitments, aiming to spell out what true freedom involves.
It concludes by asking whether Christians and Jews would do better to bracket our covenantal commitments in pursuing such wisdom. Drawing upon Novak's work, the author argues that in the face of suffering and death, God's covenantal election makes possible hope, lacking which the quest for wisdom runs aground.

Taiz?--the word is strangely familiar to many throughout the contemporary church. Familiar, perhaps, because the chanted prayers of Taiz? are well practiced in churches throughout the world. Strangely, however, because so little is known about Taiz?--from its historic beginnings to how the word itself is pronounced. The worship of the Taiz? community, as it turns out, is best understood in the context of its greater mission. On the day Jason Brian Santos arrived in the Taiz? community its leader was brutally murdered before his eyes. Instead of making Santos want to leave, the way the community handled this tragedy made him long to stay and learn more about this group of people who could respond to such evil with grace and love. In this book he takes us on a tour of one of the world's first ecumenical monastic orders, from its monastic origins in the war-torn south of 1940s France to its emerging mission as a pilgrimage site and spiritual focal point for millions of young people throughout the world. InA Community Called Taiz? you'll meet the brothers of the order and the countless visitors and volunteers who have taken upon themselves a modest mission: pronouncing peace and reconciliation to the church and the world.

This groundbreaking book investigates the religious issues that businesses confront as they expand their global activity and proposes that corporations can become instruments of peace. Timothy Fort discusses the newly emerging idea of "peace through commerce," and he argues powerfully that today's businesses have the capacity to foster both peace and religious harmony. Fort asks and answers important questions: How might businesses integrate spirituality into corporate affairs? How can spirituality contribute to the production of high-quality goods and services? What can be done to promote a spiritual connection between employees and their work? Can this be done without provoking religious animosities? What business practices might encourage an atmosphere in which constructive dialogue among spiritual traditions could proceed? The author concludes that by implementing the peaceful practices advocated by religions at their best, businesses can both nurture religious harmony and strengthen their communities.

In Intimate Diversity Paul Smith explores theological implications of interreligious marriage. Taking a practical theology approach which begins with lived experience and works through a pastoral cycle involving interpretation, normative discussion and a pragmatic outcome, the book challenges the Church of England (or other denominations) fulfil three tasks: theological, pastoral and missional. Paul Smith accepts the reality of marriage that involves couples from different religious traditions and proposes ways of justifying such marriage based on normative Christian traditions. He takes a broadly missional approach, advocating the positive role that the Church of England can play in fostering good interreligious relations in society whilst offering sympathetic pastoral support of couples who marry across religious divides.