This collection of seven essays offers wide-ranging and in-depth studies of locations sacred to Muslims, of the histories of these sites (real or imagined), and of the ways in which Muslims and members of other religions have interacted peaceably in sacred times and spaces.
After a theoretical introduction by Peter Gottschalk, David Damrel discusses historic and modern controversies surrounding Muslim practices at shrines in South Asia. Lance Laird presents a case study of a shrine holy to Palestinian Christians, who identify its patron as St. George, as well as to Palestinian Muslims, who believe that its patron is al Kha?r/Khi?r. Ethel Sara Wolper illustrates how al Khi?r's patronage was used also to show Muslim connections to Christian sites in Anatolia, and JoAnn Gross's essay explores oral and written traditions linking shrines in Tajikistan to traditional Muslim locations and figures. A chapter by the late Thomas Sizgorich examines how Christian and Muslim authors used monastic settings to reimagine the relationship between the two religions, and Alexandra Cuffel offers a study of attitudes towards the mixing of religious groups in religious festivals in eleventh- to sixteenth-century Egypt. Eric Ross shows how the Layenne Sufi order incorporates a singular combination of Christian and Muslim figures and festivals in its history and practices.
Muslims and Others in Sacred Space will be an invaluable resource to anyone interested in the complex meanings of sacred sites in Muslim history.

Interfaith Just Peacemaking is a collected work by 27 Jewish, Muslim and Christian scholars and religious leaders on the ten 'practice norms' of the peacemaking paradigm called 'Just Peace.'Just Peace theory, like the paradigm it most resembles, Just War theory, is a list of specific practices that are applied to concrete contexts.

Joseph Palmisano explores the interreligious significance of empathy for Jewish-Christian understanding. Drawing on the writings of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907-1972) and Edith Stein (1891-1942), he develops a phenomenological category of empathy defined as a way of ''re-membering'' oneself with the religious other. Palmisano follows Heschel's and Stein's personal and spiritual journeys through the darkest years of Nazi Germany. He shows that Heschel's call to Christian interlocutors for a return to God is an ecumenical call to humanity to embrace perceived others: a call to live life as a response to God's pathos. This call finds a prophetic answer in Edith Stein's witness of empathy with regard to the Holocaust. Stein, a Catholic, creates a dialectical bridge with the Jewish 'other,' neither distancing herself nor denying her Jewish roots. Stein's simultaneously Jewish and Christian fidelity is a model for interreligious relations. It is also a challenge to Catholics to remember their religion's Jewish heritage through new categories of witnessing and belonging with others. Beyond the Walls is a critical contribution to the fostering of interreligious understanding, offering both a model of the ideal Jewish-Christian relationship in Heschel and Stein and criteria with which to evaluate contemporary initiatives and controversies concerning interreligious dialogue.

A. Lukyn Williams (1853 1943) presents here a wide range of examples of Christian apologetic writings about Judaism. Taking material from the earliest years of the Christian Church until the Renaissance, the book investigates sources with Syriac, Greek, Spanish, and Latin origins. It includes observations on lost or possible books such as the first 'Book of Testimonies' posited by J. Rendel Harris (with whom Williams did not fully agree) which pre-dated the Biblical Gospels; incomplete early treatises; and scriptural extracts. Concerned more with historical detail than with exegesis, Williams' study provides extensive scholarly commentaries on all the texts included and covers possible dates of origin, sources, intended audience, and biographical information about the authors. First published in 1935 with the aim of offering source material in an area often neglected by scholars, the book remains a useful resource for students and scholars of Christian Jewish relations.

During the nineteenth century, white Americans sought the cultural transformation and physical displacement of Native people. Though this process was certainly a clash of rival economic systems and racial ideologies, it was also a profound spiritual struggle. The fight over Indian Country sparked religious crises among both Natives and Americans. In The Gods of Indian Country, Jennifer Graber tells the story of the Kiowa Indians during Anglo-Americans' hundred-year effort to seize their homeland. Like Native people across the American West, Kiowas had known struggle and dislocation before. But the forces bearing down on themsoldiers, missionaries, and government officialswere unrelenting. With pressure mounting, Kiowas adapted their ritual practices in the hope that they could use sacred power to save their lands and community. Against the Kiowas stood Protestant and Catholic leaders, missionaries, and reformers who hoped to remake Indian Country. These activists saw themselves as the Indians' friends, teachers, and protectors. They also asserted the primacy of white Christian civilization and the need to transform the spiritual and material lives of Native people. When Kiowas and other Native people resisted their designs, these Christians supported policies that broke treaties and appropriated Indian lands. They argued that the gifts bestowed by Christianity and civilization outweighed the pains that accompanied the denial of freedoms, the destruction of communities, and the theft of resources. In order to secure Indian Country and control indigenous populations, Christian activists sanctified the economic and racial hierarchies of their day. The Gods of Indian Country tells a complex, fascinating and ultimately heartbreaking tale of the struggle for the American West.

There exists today a rich and abounding diversity of religions in the world-a diversity with respect to both belief and practice. But it is a diversity that poses many challenges and raises many questions, most especially in a pluralistic milieu. How do we engage in effective dialogue with religious others? What should public education reflect in a religiously pluralistic context? What role might the diversity of religions play in developing a global ethic? How do the various religious traditions deal with the plurality of religious belief and practice? What role does gender play in such discourse? The Oxford Handbook of Religious Diversity is a volume of thirty-three original chapters that cover numerous issues in religious diversity and draw readers into the heart of the current dialogue. It is divided into three parts: Contours of Religious Diversity, Key Issues Relevant to Religious Diversity, and Differing Perspectives on Religious Diversity. Chapters in the first part trace the general features of religious diversity discussions from four different fields: history, religious studies, philosophy, and sociology. Part two explores key theological, philosophical, sociological, and public policy issues relevant to religious diversity. The third and final part provides differing analyses of religious diversity from multi-faith, gender, and global points of view. An indispensable guide for scholars and students, the Handbook makes a state-of-the-art contribution to the field with essays crafted by experts representing a wide variety of religious and philosophical perspectives.

'Ambiguous sanctuaries' are places in which the sacred is shared. These exist in almost all religions: tombs of saints, mausoleums, monasteries and shrines, a revered mountain peak, a majestic tree, a cave or special boulders in the river. This book examines this phenomenon in diverse parts of the world: in Europe, the Middle East, Asia and Brazil. What these ritual spaces share is the capacity to unsettle and challenge people's experiences and understandings of reality, as well as to provoke the imagination, allowing universes of meanings to be interlinked. The spaces discussed reveal the many different ways the sacred can be shared. Different groups may once have visited sites that are nowadays linked to only one religion. The legacy of earlier religious movements is subtly echoed in the devotional forms, rituals, symbols or narratives (hagiographies) of the present, and the architectural settings in which they take place. In some pilgrimage sites, peoples of different faiths visit and take part in devotional acts and rituals - such as processing, offering candles, incenses and flowers - that are shared. The saints to whom a shrine is dedicated can also have a double identity. Such ambiguity has often been viewed through the lens of religious purity, and the exclusivity of orthodoxy, as confusion, showing a lack of coherence and authenticity. But the openness to interpretation of sacred spaces in this collection suggests a more positive analysis: that it may be through ambiguity transcending narrow confines that pilgrims experience the sanctity and power they seek. In the engaging and accessible essays that comprise Pilgrimage and Ambiguity the contributors consider the ambiguous forces that cohere in sacred spaces - forces that move us into the inspirational depths of human spirituality. In so doing, the essays bring us closer to a deeper appreciation of how ambiguity helps to define the human condition. This collection is one that will be read and debated for many years to come. Paul Stoller, West Chester University, Pennsylvania, 2013 Anders Retzius Gold Medal Laureate in Anthropology In a time of religious polarization, this fine collection of essays recalls that ambiguity, ambivalence and shared experience characterize the sacred as it is encountered in pilgrimages. Readers will travel through the Mediterranean, India, Pakistan and China, but also Western Europe and Amazonia, to discover saintly landscapes full of multiple meanings. Alexandre Papas, Senior Research Fellow, National Centre for Scientific Research, Paris

It is generally accepted that the Middle East witnessed the ancient rise of monotheism and its dissemination. The three faiths predominantly concerned - Judaism, Christianity, and Islam - have retained their separateness and have been in different degrees torn asunder by schisms; but less well known has been the degree of co-operation between the three faiths and their multifarious sects, throughout history. First published in 1969, Religion in the Middle East aims to give a factual account of these three religions and their sects, in concord and conflict, from an historical perspective. The focus was on the significance of Islam, considered to be the dominant religion of the Middle East since the seventh century. Experts from many parts of the world contributed individual chapters, and the whole work was co-ordinated by a team of leading scholars, making it an erudite study that will be of interest to anyone interested in the historical impact of Islam in the Middle East.

The Apostle Paul in the Jewish Imagination is a pioneering multidisciplinary examination of Jewish perspectives on Paul of Tarsus. Here, the views of individual Jewish theologians, religious leaders, and biblical scholars of the last 150 years, together with artistic, literary, philosophical, and psychoanalytical approaches, are set alongside popular cultural attitudes. Few Jews, historically speaking, have engaged with the first-century Apostle to the Gentiles. The modern period has witnessed a burgeoning interest in this topic, however, with treatments reflecting profound concerns about the nature of Jewish authenticity and the developing intercourse between Jews and Christians. In exploring these issues, Jewish commentators have presented Paul in a number of apparently contradictory ways. Among other things, he is both a bridge and a barrier to interfaith harmony; both the founder of Christianity and a convert to it; both an anti-Jewish apostate and a fellow traveler on the path to Jewish self-understanding; and both the chief architect of the religious foundations of Western thought and its destroyer. The Apostle Paul in the Jewish Imagination represents an important contribution to Jewish cultural studies and to the study of Jewish-Christian relations.

Relations between Christians and Jews over the past two thousand years have been characterised to a great extent by mutual distrust and by Christian discrimination and violence against Jews. In recent decades, however, a new spirit of dialogue has been emerging, beginning with an awakening among Christians of the Jewish origins of Christianity, and encouraging scholars of both traditions to work together. An Introduction to Jewish-Christian Relations sheds fresh light on this ongoing interfaith encounter, exploring key writings and themes in Jewish-Christian history, from the Jewish context of the New Testament to major events of modern times, including the rise of ecumenism, the horrors of the Holocaust, and the creation of the state of Israel. This accessible theological and historical study also touches on numerous related areas such as Jewish and interfaith studies, philosophy, sociology, cultural studies, international relations and the political sciences.

Christian theology has traditionally been very negative about Judaism. Richard Harries argues for a radical rethink in the light of the evil of the holocaust and offers fresh approaches to contentious issues such as forgiveness and the problem of suffering in the two religions. He maintains - controversially - that Christians should not be trying to convert Jews to Christianity. Rather, they should build on the great amount they have in common to work together for a better world.

In this book, Scarfe Beckett is concerned with representations of the Islamic world prevalent in Anglo-Saxon England. Using a wide variety of literary, historical and archaeological evidence, she argues that the first perceptions of Arabs, Ismaelites and Saracens which derived from Christian exegesis preconditioned wester expressions of hostility and superiority towards peoples of the Islamic world, and that these received ideas prevailed even as material contacts increased between England and Muslim territory. Medieval texts invariably represented Muslim Arabs as Saracens and Ismaelites (or Hagarenes), described by Jerome as biblical enemies of the Christian world three centuries before Muhammad's lifetime. Two early ideas in particular - that Saracens worshipped Venus and dissembled their own identity - continued into the early modern period. This finding has interesting implications for earlier theses by Edward Said and Norman Daniel concerning the history of English perceptions of Islam.

This is a revisionary study of Muslims living under Christian rule during the Spanish 'reconquest'. It looks beyond the obvious religious distinctions and delves into the subtleties of identity in the thirteenth-century Crown of Aragon, uncovering a social dynamic in which sectarian differences comprise only one of the many factors in the causal complex of political, economic and cultural reactions. Beginning with the final stage of independent Muslim rule in the Ebro valley region, the book traces the transformation of Islamic society into mudejar society under Christian domination. This was a case of social evolution in which Muslims, far from being passive victims of foreign colonisation, took an active part in shaping their institutions and experiences as subjects of the Infidel. Using a diverse range of methodological approaches, this book challenges widely held assumptions concerning Christian-Muslim relations in the Middle Ages, and minority-majority relations in general.

Pastor of a bilingual, multicultural church for more than a decade, Gary Commins knows that "diversity" is a spiritual exercise that can be as charged with anxiety as it is laced with hope. In Becoming Bridges, Commins lays the groundwork for diversity as an intrinsic part of the life of faith and calls us to become "bridge people": people who are willing to traverse gaps of ignorance and bridge the things that separate us-religion, race, culture, class, gender, and sexual orientation.

A Dialogue of Life Towards the encounter of Jews and Christians will motivate Jews and Christians to begin "the way of dialogue." These pages provide accessible tools for anyone taking part in the encounter between people of different cultures or religions. It offers useful tools for those who work in the areas of education (teachers, professors, and catechists), as well as for families.

The idea of a single devine being - God, Yahweh, Allah - has existed for over 4,000 years. But the history of God is also the history of human struggle. While Judaism, Islam and Christianity proclaim the goodness of God, organised religion has too often been the catalyst for violence and ineradicable prejudice. In this fascinating, extensive and original account of the evolution of belief, Karen Armstrong examines Western socitety's unerring fidelity to this idea of One God and the man conflicting convictions it engenders. A controversial, extraordinary sroty of worship and war, A HISTORY OF GOD confronts the most fundamental fact - or fiction - of our lives.

In a world where religious pluralism is a necessity of modern life, diverse religions exist for the diverse people populating the earth. Theologically, how do people of different faiths find liberation in their separate gods simultaneously? Stephen Kaplan answers this question with his new book, Different Paths, Different Summits. He presents a model for religious pluralism that does not fall victim to the criticisms of pluralist models. Religious positions do not need to be transcended in order for varying faiths to be both honored and liberating simultaneously. Kaplan skillfully depicts three different realties, a theistic ultimate reality, a monistic ultimate reality, and a process non-dualism, along with their beliefs. His model allows for each to exit simultaneously, mutually interpenetrating and distinct.

Christians and Muslims together make up about 57% of the world's population today, and by the end of the century they will constitute about 66% of the world's population. More than any other single factor, the wellbeing of our children and grandchildren may depend on how well Christians learn to relate to Muslims - and Hindus, the next largest faith, not to mention Buddhists, Jews, people of indigenous faiths, and the nonreligious. We know how to have a strong Christian identity that is intolerant of or belligerent towards other faiths, and we know how to have a weak Christian identity that is tolerant and benevolent. But is there a third alternative? How do we discover, live, teach, and practise a Christian identity that is both strong and benevolent towards other faiths?In this provocative and inspiring book, author Brian McLaren tackles some of the hardest questions around the issue of interfaith relations, and shares a hopeful vision of the reconciliation that Jesus offers to our multi-faith world.

Why should Christians engage in interfaith dialogue with Muslims? Does Islam have anything to offer Christians? What is Islamophobia, and what should we do about it? These are just some of the questions addressed in Finding Jesus among Muslims, an urgent new book from author Jordan Denari Duffner. Drawing from church teaching, the stories of saints and martyrs, and her extensive personal experiences living among Muslims in both the United States and the Middle East, Duffner explains why all Christians are called to participate in a "dialogue of life" with Muslims. Her intelligent and fresh approach makes Duffner a welcome voice on some of the most important social and religious questions of our day.

Christians and Muslims comprise the world's two largest religious communities. This book looks at the history of their relationship - part peaceful co-existence and part violent confrontation - from their first encounters in the medieval period up to the present. It emphasises the theological, cultural and political context in which perceptions and attitudes have developed and gives a depth of historical insight to the complex current Christian-Muslim interactions across the globe.

In the early twentieth century, The Eastern Buddhist journal pioneered the presentation of Buddhism to the west and encouraged the west's engagement in interpretation. This interactive process increased dramatically in the post-war period, when dialogue between Buddhist and Christian thought began to take off in earnest. These debates and dialogues brought in voices with a Zen orientation, influenced in part by the philosophical Buddhism of the Kyoto School. Also to be heard however were contributions from the Pure Land and the Shin Buddhist traditions, which also have a strong tradition in the city. The book brings together a wide range of authors who have significantly influenced subsequent Buddhist-Christian dialogue and the interaction between east and west.