Learning Interreligiously offers a series of about one hundred short pieces, written online between 2008 and 2016. They are meant for a wide range of readers interested in interreligious dialogue, interreligious learning, and the realities of Hindu-Christian encounter today, and are rich in insights drawn from teaching, travels in America and India, and the author's research on sacred texts. The author, a Catholic priest who has spent more than forty years learning from Hinduism and observing religion as a plus and minus in today's world, has much to share with readers. Some pieces were prompted by items in the news, some go deeper into traditions and probe the rich Scriptures and practices going back millennia, some seek simply to provoke fresh thinking, and others invite spiritual reflection. The book is divided into several parts so that readers can focus on individual events that made the news or on longer term and more concerted study. Familiar texts such as the Yoga Sutras, the Bhagavad Gita, the Qur'an, and key passages from the New Testament will be considered for their spiritual possibilities. Readers will find much here to learn from and respond to as they too consider religion in today's world.

Muslim Conversions to Christ focuses on the so-called Insider Movement (as promoted by certain missiologists). Drawing on international scholars and practitioners in the fields of the history and nature of Islam, the Qur'an, Christian-Muslim relations, biblical theology, and practical missiology, this book presents a solid academic rejoinder to the IM phenomenon. Moreover, it brings into the conversation the voices of believers from Muslim backgrounds (BMBs), Middle Eastern scholars, and missiologists living among Muslims in the Middle East and elsewhere. Readers will understand that Muhammad is not a prophet based on the Bible and that the Qur'an is not a scriptural guide for Muslims after their conversion. Rather than acquiesce in IM marketing ploys, such readers will be encouraged to stand in solidarity with BMBs who suffer for their faith.

The thirteenth century mystic Ibn `Arabi was the foremost Sufi theorist of the premodern era. For more than a century, Western scholars and esotericists have heralded his universalism, arguing that he saw all contemporaneous religions as equally valid. In Rethinking Ibn `Arabi, Gregory Lipton calls this image into question and throws into relief how Ibn `Arabi's discourse is inseparably intertwined with the absolutist vision of his own religious milieuthat is, the triumphant claim that Islam fulfilled, superseded, and therefore abrogated all previous revealed religions. Lipton juxtaposes Ibn `Arabi's absolutist conception with the later reception of his ideas, exploring how they have been read, appropriated, and universalized within the reigning interpretive field of Perennial Philosophy in the study of Sufism. The contours that surface through this comparative analysis trace the discursive practices that inform Ibn `Arabi's Western reception back to the eighteenth and nineteenth century study of "authentic" religion, where European ethno-racial superiority was wielded against the Semitic Otherboth Jewish and Muslim. Lipton argues that supersessionist models of exclusivism are buried under contemporary Western constructions of religious authenticity in ways that ironically mirror Ibn `Arabi's medieval absolutism.

PAPERBACK FOR SALE IN AFRICA ONLY Analyses the complexities of Christian-Muslim conflict that threatens the fragile democracy of Nigeria, and the implications for global peace and security. Nigeria: Premium TimesBooks In northern Nigeria, high levels of ethnic diversity have coincided with acute polarization between Muslims and Christians, increasingly fuelling violent conflict. The climate of insecurity threatens northern Nigeria's development, accentuates the inequalities between it and the rest of the country, and undermines the attempt to stabilize democracy in the country. Externally, fears have also been expressed that Islamist movements in northern Nigeria form part of a wider network constituting a threat to global peace and security. Refuting a "clash of civilizations" between Muslims and Christians, the authors of this new study highlight the multiplicity of Muslim and Christian groups contending for influence and relevance, and the doctrinal, political and historical drivers of conflict and violence between and within them. They analyse some of the region's most contentious issues: conflict and peacebuilding in Jos; the Boko Haram insurgency; the informal economy; and the challenges of legal pluralism posed by the declaration of "full" Sharia law in 12 Muslim-majority states. Finally, they suggest appropriate and effective policy responses at local, national, and international levels, discussing the importance of informal institutions as avenues for peace-building and the complementarities between local and national dynamics in the search for peace. Abdul Raufu Mustapha is Associate Professor in African Politics, University of Oxford; David Ehrhardt is Assistant Professor of International Development at Leiden University College. Companion volume: Sects &Social Disorder: Muslim Identities & Conflict in Northern Nigeria edited by Abdul Raufu Mustapha (James Currey 2014) Nigeria: Premium Times Books