While the subject of Christian-Muslim or Muslim-Christian interaction is still not a traditional or systematic discipline, interest in the encounter of these two religions has grown considerably over the last decade. Historians, including historians of Islam and Christianity have always been interested in the civilizational meeting of the two religions, in conflict or in times of peace. This includes aspects of post-colonial studies, which incorporate cultural, literary and political writings which consider the intellectual and social ruptures in so much of the Islamic world in the 19th and 20th centuries. Theologians however have only recently begin to appreciate the amount of material which illustrates the extent to which Christians and Muslims wrote about one another's faith and spoke of each other in a variety of contexts in both polemical and eirenic terms. These resources serve to enrich the understanding of one's own faith and the changing historical relationship with the other. Today, Muslim-Christian is often understood as Islam/West where the Christianity and secularism are either conflated or Christianity subsumed within the larger cultural framework of the west. Either way, Islam is a foreign presence and its points of reference not easily assimilated in the narrative of a Judaeo-Christian West. Nevertheless this has created an interesting intellectual and scholarly dynamic in a wide range of disciplines. This includes ethics, politics, gender studies and the emergence of an `interfaith' literature which is increasingly used in scholarly as well as grass roots settings. The collection will comprise around sixty pre-published journal articles and some book chapters. Each volume will contain around 15 articles/chapters. The articles will be secondary sources analysing the works of individual Christian and Muslim scholars, so will not be extracts of primary material thought it is hoped that the majority will contain some primary material. Volume One will contain an Introduction to the whole collection. The volumes will provide a unique and rich reflection of Muslim-Christian encounter. This work will introduce the scholar and the student to the variety of approaches people of faith/no faith have taken to thinking about the two religions. The volumes will cover doctrine, interfaith practice as theory and lived realities and philosophical and literary themes and approaches.

Faith and Sword gives a concise history of what has arguably been the longest conflict in human history - a conflict that continues, in a new form, to this day. The overtly religious Christian-Muslim struggle lasted for nearly thirteen centuries, and for most of that period the Muslims were in the ascendant. The Christians eventually halted the tide of Arab conquest, but their counterstroke in the Crusades ended in failure and the Muslim threat was renewed by the Ottoman Turks. Only after 1600 did the Christians finally begin to gain the upper hand, with the fall of the Ottoman empire after the First World War seeming to mark the final victory of the Christians. Between 1918 and 1979, however, the Christian-Muslim conflict continued, but in a less obviously religious form. Christendom became the largely secularised West, and Muslim success in throwing off European colonialism owed more to secular nationalists than religious leaders. After the Iranian revolution of 1979 the picture changed again: religious fundamentalism revived on the Muslim side and the USA became its principal target.Today the USA has never been more militarily dominant, yet it is rendered insecure by a tiny minority of religious militants whose outlook is said to have been superseded by the march of history. Alan G. Jamieson provides a wide-ranging and detailed survey of this conflict through all its stages, and shows how the present situation has emerged. He ranges widely in time, from the original Arab conquests in the seventh century to the present conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. All areas of conflict are included, from Morocco to Indonesia, and from Russia to Somalia. This authoritative and readable study will appeal equally to scholars, students and the general reader, giving an accessible introduction to one of the most important conflicts of our time.

South Asia is home to more than a billion Hindus and half a billion Muslims. But the region is also home to substantial Christian communities, some dating almost to the earliest days of the faith. The stories of South Asia's Christians are vital for understanding the shifting contours of World Christianity, precisely because of their history of interaction with members of these other religious traditions. In this broad, accessible overview of South Asian Christianity, Chandra Mallampalli shows how the faith has been shaped by Christians' location between Hindus and Muslims. Mallampalli begins with a discussion of South India's ancient Thomas Christian tradition, which interacted with West Asia's Persian Christians and thrived for centuries alongside their Hindu and Muslim neighbours. He then underscores efforts of Roman Catholic and Protestant missionaries to understand South Asian societies for purposes of conversion. The publication of books and tracts about other religions, interreligious debates, and aggressive preaching were central to these endeavours, but rarely succeeded at yielding converts. Instead, they played an important role in producing a climate of religious competition, which ultimately marginalized Christians in Hindu-, Muslim-, and Buddhist-majority countries of post-colonial South Asia. Ironically, the greatest response to Christianity came from poor and oppressed Dalit (formerly "untouchable") and tribal communities who were largely indifferent to missionary rhetoric. Their mass conversions, poetry, theology, and embrace of Pentecostalism are essential for understanding South Asian Christianity and its place within World Christianity today.

This book explores how Nostra Aetate, the Declaration on the Relation of the Church with Non-Christian Religions of the Second Vatican Council, can influence inter-religious dialogue and understanding in the modern world. Although influential in religious, academic, and scholarly circles, it is relatively unknown outside these areas. The contributors remedy that deficit by highlighting the declaration's difficult historical and social context and the Church's evolving relationship with non-Christians. Contentious topics are examined such as the link between the Jewish people and the land and state of Israel, that questions the Catholic understanding of the relativity of national borders and identity, and the challenges posed to the Church's relationship with Islam by its prioritization of human rights and religious freedom for Christians and minorities in certain Muslim regimes. Given its scope, it is an ideal resource for graduate students and researchers in the fields of political science, international relations, religion, and minority studies.

It is generally accepted that Jews and evangelical Christians have little in common. Yet special alliances developed between the two groups in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Evangelicals viewed Jews as both the rightful heirs of Israel and as a group who failed to recognize their true savior. Consequently, they set out to influence the course of Jewish life by attempting to evangelize Jews and to facilitate their return to Palestine. Their double-edged perception caused unprecedented political, cultural, and theological meeting points that have revolutionized Christian-Jewish relationships. An Unusual Relationship explores the beliefs and political agendas that evangelicals have created in order to affect the future of the Jews. Additionally, it analyses Jewish opinions and reactions to those efforts, as well as those of other religious groups, such as Arab Christians. This volume offers a fascinating, comprehensive analysis of the roots, manifestations, and consequences of evangelical interest in the Jews, and the alternatives they provide to conventional historical Christian-Jewish interactions. It also provides a compelling understanding of Middle Eastern politics through a new lens.

This edited volume offers solutions on the challenges of religious pluralisation from a European perspective. It gives special attention to interreligious dialogue and interfaith relations as specific means of dealing with plurality. In particular, the contributors describe innovative scientific approaches and broad political and social scopes of action for addressing the diversity of beliefs, practices, and traditions. In total, more than 25 essays bring together interdisciplinary and international research perspectives. The papers cover a wide thematic range. They highlight how religious pluralisation effects such fields as theology, politics, civil society, education, and communication/media. The contributors not only illustrate academic debates about religious diversity but they also look at the political and social scope for dealing with such. Coverage spans numerous countries, and beliefs, from Buddhism to Judaism. This book features presentations from the Herrenhausen Conference on "Religious Pluralisation - A Challenge for Modern Societies," held in Hanover, Germany, October 2016. This insightful collection will benefit students and researchers with an interest in religion and laicism, interreligious dialogue, governance of religious diversity, and religion in the public sphere.

This book is the first to critically analyze Buddhist-Muslim relations in Theravada Buddhist majority states in South and Southeast Asia. Asia is home to the largest population of Buddhists and Muslims. In recent years, this interfaith communal living has incurred conflicts, such as the ethnic-religious conflicts in Myanmar, Sri Lanka, and Thailand. Experts from around the world collaborate to provide a comprehensive look into religious pluralism and religious violence. The book is divided into two sections. The first section provides historical background to the three countries with the largest Buddhist-Muslim relations. The second section has chapters that focus on specific encounters between Buddhists and Muslims, which includes anti-Buddhist sentiments in Bangladesh, the role of gender in Muslim-Buddhist relations and the rise of anti-Muslim and anti-Rohingya sentiments in Myanmar. By exploring historical fluctuations over time-paying particular attention to how state-formations condition Muslim-Buddhist entanglements-the book shows the processual and relational aspects of religious identity constructions and Buddhist-Muslim interactions in Theravada Buddhist majority states.

Antisemitism has been on the rise in recent years, with violent attacks, increased verbal insults, and an acceptability in some circles of what would hitherto have been condemned as outrageous antisemitic discourse. Yet despite the dramatic increase in debate and discussion around antisemitism, many of us remain confused. In this urgent and timely book, Rabbi Julia Neuberger uses contemporary examples, along with historical context, to unpack what constitutes antisemitism, building a powerful argument for why it is so crucial that we come to a shared understanding now.

This enlightening edited collection shows how migration shapes the lives of faith communities - and vice versa - through diverse prisms including diaspora, generational change, cultural conflict, conceptions of 'ministry' and artistic response. The contributors comprise writers, poets and artists from the three largest Abrahamic faiths (Judaism, Christianity, Islam) and beyond. They show how issues of migration are addressed through a variety of different media such as theological debate and shared community action, poetry and art. As issues of migration are an important factor in so many political and social debates, faith communities are looking for guidance on how to deepen their theological understanding of migration. This book helps them to reflect on their own practices and experiences, learn from their own traditions and engage in dialogue with diverse communities. *All royalties from book sales will be donated to The Helen Bamber Foundation - a UK-based charity that supports people who have survived extreme physical, sexual and psychological violence.*

Before they were both internationally renowned philosophers, Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy and Franz Rosenzweig were young German soldiers fighting in World War I corresponding by letter and forming the foundation of their deep intellectual friendship. Collected here, this correspondence provides an intimate portrait of their views on history, philosophy, rhetoric, and religion as well as on their writings and professors. Most centrally, Rosenstock-Huessy and Rosenzweig discuss, frankly but respectfully, the differences between Judaism and Chiristianity and the reasons they have chosen their respective faiths. This edition includes a new foreword by Paul Mendes-Flohr, a new preface by Harold Stahmer along with his original introduction, and essays by Dorothy Emmet and Alexander Altmann, who calls this correspondence "one of the most important religious documents of our age" and "the most perfect example of a human approach to the Jewish-Christian problem."

Il profeta islamico Maometto diede avvio a un programma teologico in forma teocratica. Poiche il Corano, in molti modi, si rivolge ai cristiani e agli ebrei e li invita a fare dichiarazioni, una risposta propriamente teologica e legittima e necessaria. Tenendo conto delle attuali ricerche scientifiche sull'Islam, questo libro tratta le fonti del Corano, le fondamentali caratteristiche del suo rapporto con l'ebraismo e la sua percezione di Gesu. Cio conduce ad una valutazione realistica dell'Islam e ad impulsi per una rinnovata autocomprensione cristiana. Il quarto capitolo presenta le affermazioni largamente sconosciute del filosofo ebreo Franz Rosenzweig e del teologo Joseph Ratzinger/Benedetto XVI sull'Islam che sono un aiuto decisivo per l'orientamento al di la della sottomissione.

In a context of scandal and precipitous decline, the Christian church cannot afford to do what it has always done, argues Eugene R. Schlesinger. It must return to its roots and clarify to itself and the general public what its nature and purpose are. Sacrificing the Church provides this clarity by returning to the church’s foundation: Jesus Christ and his crucifixion. It presents a vision of the church in which every aspect of the church’s life flows from and expresses the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. This sacrifice is the basis of every ecclesial experience. It is the form and content of the church’s life, a life which shares in the eternal Trinitarian life of God. By Christ’s sacrifice we are introduced into the divine life, and therefore we must participate in it. This plays out in three key areas of the church’s life: its worship of God (Mass), its mission to the world (mission), and its efforts toward the unity of all people, beginning with divided Christians (ecumenism).

In Shoah Through Muslim Eyes, the author discusses her journey with Judaism as a Muslim. Her book is based on the struggle with antisemitism within Muslim communities and her interviews with Shoah survivors. Rejecting polemical myths about the Holocaust and Jews, Afridi offers a new way of creating understanding between the two communities through the acceptance the enormity of the Shoah. Her journey is both personal and academic: the reader can find nuances of her belief in Islam, principles of justice, and the loneliness of such a journey. The chapters discuss the Holocaust and how it was in truth unprecedented, interviews with survivors, antisemitism and Islamophobia, camps in Arab lands, and Islam and memory. Afridi includes newly-uncovered Muslim-Arab narratives that enhance our understanding of the reach of the Holocaust into Muslim lands under the Vichy and Nazi governments.

Seitdem John Hick durch seine pluralistische Position den Weg fur eine Annaherung der Religionen geschaffen hat, haben seine Werke viel Aufmerksamkeit von Anhangern und Kritikern erfahren. Dieses Werk setzt sich kritisch mit dem Lebenswerk Hicks auseinander, und vergleicht die Argumente fur seine Ansicht mit denen von Perry Schmidt-Leukel, Alvin Plantinga und Karl Rahner. Der Autor legt die Pramissen der vier Positionen offen, und macht deutlich, warum trotz aller berechtigten Kritik die pluralistische Position die plausibelste Antwort auf die Frage liefert, wieso es mehrere Religionen gibt, wenn laut dem NT (nur) Jesus Christus der Weg, die Wahrheit und das Leben ist.

This book explores the relationship between the distinctive Islamic beliefs (Ibadism) of Oman and how they define the experience of the church with regards to religious freedom. Oman is a nation with a long and glorious history of maritime trade, stretching from China and India to the East coast of Africa. From sultan to shopkeeper, farmer to craftsman, the citizens of Oman embrace a surprising diversity of cultural heritage ranging from Baluchi, Persian, Yemeni, and East African. Yet, there has hitherto been very little research about Christianity in this part of the world. Through the use of historical research, interviews and theological discourse, Andrew David Thompson analyzes and reveals the distinctive experience of the Church in Oman.

In the online world, people argue about anything and everything - religion is no exception. Stephen Pihlaja investigates how several prominent social media figures present views about religion in an environment where their positions are challenged. The analysis shows how conflict creates a space for users to share, explain, and develop their opinions and beliefs, by making appeals to both a core audience of like-minded viewers and a broader audience of viewers who are potentially interested in the claims, ambivalent, or openly hostile. The book argues that in the back-and-forth of these arguments, the positions that users take in response to the arguments of others have consequences for how religious talk develops, and potentially for how people understand and practice their beliefs in the twenty-first century. Based on original empirical research, it addresses long-debated questions in sociolinguistics and discourse analysis regarding the role of language in building solidarity, defining identity and establishing genres and registers of interaction.

In Germany at the turn of the century, Buddhism transformed from an obscure topic, of interest to only a few misfit scholars, into a cultural phenomenon. Many of the foremost authors of the period were profoundly influenced by this rapid rise of Buddhism-among them, some of the best-known names in the German-Jewish canon. Sebastian Musch excavates this neglected dimension of German-Jewish identity, drawing on philosophical treatises, novels, essays, diaries, and letters to trace the history of Jewish-Buddhist encounters up to the start of the Second World War. Franz Rosenzweig, Martin Buber, Leo Baeck, Theodor Lessing, Jakob Wassermann, Walter Hasenclever, and Lion Feuchtwanger are featured alongside other, lesser known figures like Paul Cohen-Portheim and Walter Tausk. As Musch shows, when these thinkers wrote about Buddhism, they were also negotiating their own Jewishness.

Western Christians in the twentieth century viewed Islam through a lens of social and political concerns that would have appeared novel to their medieval and early-modern predecessors. Concerns about the predicament of secular 'modernity' infused Christian discourse with distinct assumptions that shaped engagement with Islam in fundamentally new ways. J. N. D. (Norman) Anderson (1908-94), a highly influential British Christian scholar of Islam, embodied this new orientation in his commitment to 'modernise' Islam. Anderson's engagement with Islam as a missionary, intelligence agent, scholar of Islamic law and advisor to various Muslim governments, spanned multiple decades and continents. As well as shaping Western understandings of Islamic law and its application, he was involved in debates about the end of the British Empire and the transformation of Christian missions following formal decolonisation. Because of Anderson's location at the intersection of so many different debates concerning Islam, his life provides unique insights into the ways in which Christians reconfigured their response to Islam in the last century. Given Christianity's continued influence on British and American ideas about Islam, this study provides crucial insight into the persistent focus on 'modernising' and 'secularising' Islam today.

Der islamische Prophet Muhammad ist einst mit einem theologischen Programm in theokratischer Gestalt angetreten. Da der Koran Christen und Juden vielfach anspricht und zu Stellungnahmen auffordert, ist eine theologische Antwort legitim und notwendig. Der vorliegende Band behandelt unter Einbeziehung aktueller islamwissenschaftlicher Erkenntnisse die Quellen des Korans, die Grundzuge seines Verhaltnisses zum Judentum und sein Jesusbild. Daraus ergeben sich sowohl eine realistische Bewertung des Islam als auch Impulse fur ein christliches Selbstverstandnis. Das 4. Kapitel stellt die weithin unbekannten Sichtweisen des judischen Philosophen Franz Rosenzweig und des Theologen Joseph Ratzinger/Benedikt XVI. auf den Islam hin vor - als entscheidende Orientierungshilfe jenseits von Unterwerfung.

Since the 1979 revolution, Iran has promoted a Shi'a Islamic identity aimed at transcending ethnic and national boundaries. During the same period, Iran's Armenian community, once a prominent Christian minority in Tehran, has declined by more than eighty percent. Although the Armenian community is recognised by the constitution and granted specific privileges under Iranian law, they do not share equal rights with their Shi'i Muslim compatriots. Drawing upon interviews conducted with members of the Armenian community and using sources in both Persian and Armenian languages, this book questions whether the Islamic Republic has failed or succeeded in fostering a cohesive identity which enables non-Muslims to feel a sense of belonging in this Islamic Republic. As state identities are also often key in exacerbating ethnic conflict, this book probes into the potential cleavage points for future social conflict in Iran.

Das geistliche Spiel des Mittelalters erfuhr wahrend der Reformationszeit massgebliche Veranderungen. Dennoch lebten Teile der mittelalterlichen Spieltradition auch in den geistlichen Dramen protestantischer Dramatiker fort, indem sie reflektierten Transformationsprozessen unterworfen wurden, die semantische Verschiebungen, Adaptionen und Modifikationen mit sich brachten. Die komparatistische und interdisziplinare Studie von Maximiliane Johanna Antonia Gurth beleuchtet vielfaltige Erscheinungsformen, Aspekte und Kontexte dieser Transformationen im protestantischen Drama des 16. Jahrhunderts und zeigt, wie die theologischen Bruche, inter- und binnenkonfessionelle Konflikte, aber auch transkonfessionelle Gemeinsamkeiten, uber interkonfessionelle Austauschprozesse immer wieder neu verhandelt wurden. Die Autorin untersucht und analysiert den Einfluss diskursiver und gesellschaftlicher Kontexte auf die konkrete Realisierung von Interkonfessionalitat im protestantischen Drama und entwirft einen neu perspektivierten Blick auf die kommunikative Interaktion der Konfessionen in der Reformationszeit.

In his latest book, William Egginton laments the current debate over religion in America, in which religious fundamentalists have set the tone of political discourse--no one can get elected without advertising a personal relation to God, for example--and prominent atheists treat religious belief as the root of all evil. Neither of these positions, Egginton argues, adequately represents the attitudes of a majority of Americans who, while identifying as Christians, Jews, and Muslims, do not find fault with those who support different faiths and philosophies. In fact, Egginton goes so far as to question whether fundamentalists and atheists truly oppose each other, united as they are in their commitment to a "code of codes." In his view, being a religious fundamentalist does not require adhering to a particular religious creed. Fundamentalists--and stringent atheists--unconsciously believe that the methods we use to understand the world are all versions of an underlying master code. This code of codes represents an ultimate truth, explaining everything. Surprisingly, perhaps the most effective weapon against such thinking is religious moderation, a way of believing that questions the very possibility of a code of codes as the source of all human knowledge. The moderately religious, with their inherent skepticism toward a master code, are best suited to protect science, politics, and other diverse strains of knowledge from fundamentalist attack, and to promote a worldview based on the compatibility between religious faith and scientific method.

This comprehensive volume brings together a distinguished editorial team, including some of the field's pioneers, to explore the aims, practice, and historical context of interfaith collaboration. Explores in full the background, history, objectives, and discourse between the leaders and practitioners of the world's major religions Examines relations between religions from around the world, moving well beyond the common focus on Christianity, to also cover over 12 major religions Features a wealth of case studies on contemporary interreligious dialogue Charts a long-term shift away from a competitive rivalry between belief systems, and a change in focus towards the more respectful, cooperative approach reflected in institutions such as the World Council of Churches Includes up-to-date commentary on the growing dialogue of recent years, written by some of the leading figures working in the field of interfaith discourse

This multidisciplinary volume unites research on diverse aspects of Jewish-Muslim relations, exchanges and coexistence across time including the Abrahamic tradition enigma, Jews in the Qur'an and Hadith, Ibn al-'Arabi and the Kabala, comparative feminist theology, Jews, Christians, Muslims and the Gospel of Barnabas, harmonizing religion and philosophy in Andalusia, Jews and Muslims in medieval Christian Spain, Israeli Jews and Muslim and Christian Arabs, Jewish-Muslim coexistence on Cyprus, Muslim-Jewish dialogues in Berlin and Barcelona, Jewish-Christian-Muslim trialogues and teleology, Jewish and Muslim dietary laws, and Jewish and Muslim integration in Switzerland and Germany.