Africa continues to be a region with strong commitments to religious freedom and religious pluralism. These, however, are rarely mere facts on the ground – they are legal, political, social, and theological projects that require considerable effort to realise. This volume – compiling the proceedings of the third annual conference of the African Consortium for Law and Religion Studies – focuses on various issues which vastly effect the understanding of religious pluralism in Africa. These include, amongst others, religious freedom as a human right, the importance of managing religious pluralism, and the permissibility of religious practice and observance in South African public schools.

Muthuraj Swamy provides a fresh perspective on the world religions paradigm and 'interreligious dialogue'. By challenging the assumption that 'world religions' operate as essential entities separate from the lived experiences of practitioners, he shows that interreligious dialogue is in turn problematic as it is built on this very paradigm, and on the myth of religious conflict. Offering a critique of the idea of 'dialogue' as it has been advanced by its proponents such as religious leaders and theologians whose aims are to promote inter-religious conversation and understanding, the author argues that this approach is 'elitist' and that in reality, people do not make sharp distinctions between religions, nor do they separate political, economic, social and cultural beliefs and practices from their religious traditions. Case studies from villages in southern India explore how Hindu, Muslim and Christian communities interact in numerous ways that break the neat categories often used to describe each religion. Swamy argues that those who promote dialogue are ostensibly attempting to overcome the separate identities of religious practitioners through understanding, but in fact, they re-enforce them by encouraging a false sense of separation. The Problem with Interreligious Dialogue: Plurality, Conflict and Elitism in Hindu-Christian-Muslim Relations provides an innovative approach to a central issue confronting Religious Studies, combining both theory and ethnography.

'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

In Common Words in Muslim-Christian Dialogue Vebjorn L. Horsfjord offers an analysis of texts from an international dialogue process between Christian and Muslim leaders. Through detailed engagement with the Muslim dialogue letter A Common Word between Us and You (2007) and a large number of Christian responses to it, the study analyses the dialogue process in the wake of the Muslim initiative and shows how the various texts gain meaning through their interaction. The author uses tools from critical discourse analysis and speech act analysis and claims that the Islamic dialogue initiative became more important as an invitation to Muslim-Christian dialogue than as theological reflection. He shows how Christian leaders systematically chose to steer the dialogue process towards practical questions about peaceful coexistence and away from theological issues.

In Hope and Otherness, Jakob Wiren analyses the place and role of the religious Other in contemporary eschatology. In connection with this theme, he examines and compares different levels of inclusion and exclusion in Christian, Muslim, and Jewish eschatologies. He argues that a distinction should be made in approaches to this issue between soteriological openness and eschatological openness. By going beyond Christian theology and also looking to Muslim and Jewish sources and by combining the question of the religious Other with eschatology, Wiren explores ways of articulating Christian eschatology in light of religious otherness, and provides a new and vital slant to the threefold paradigm of exclusivism, inclusivism and pluralism that has been prevalent in the theology of religions. "Jakob Wiren's study pushes forward the frontiers of three disciplines all at the same time: theology of religions; comparative religions and eschatology. (...) This is a challenging and important book." - Gavin D'Costa, University of Bristol, Professor of Catholic Theology, 2017 "This book explores of the status of religious others in Christian eschatology, and of eschatology itself as a privileged place for reflecting on religious otherness. Wiren mines not only Christian, but also Jewish and Muslim sources to develop an inclusive eschatology. Hope and Otherness thus represents an important contribution to both theology of religions and comparative theology." - Catherine Cornille, Boston College, Professor of Comparative Theology, 2017

The Book of Tribulations is the earliest complete Muslim apocalyptic text to survive, and as such has considerable value as a primary text. It is unique in its importance for Islamic history: focusing upon the central Syrian city of Hims, it gives us a picture of the personalities of the city, the tribal conflicts within, the tensions between the proto-Muslim community and the majority Christian population, and above all details about the wars with the Byzantines. Additionally, Nu`aym gives us a range of both the Umayyad and the Abbasid official propaganda, which was couched in apocalyptic and messianic terms.

Often Christian interfaith engagement has been viewed through the lense of theology of religions where the primary questions are often about the salvific destiny of people of other faiths. 'Faith, Hope and Love' offers an alternative approach asking how do Christian interfaith practitioners live out their discipleship in a multi-faith world? And what, theologically, is being expressed in their activity? Demonstrating a new and innovative approach to interfaith engagement, this book argues for theological reflection on the multi faith reality of our society to focus on the practice of Christian interfaith engagement, drawing on the methodology of practical theology to explore the impact of encounter on Christian self-understanding. It suggests that other faith traditions are no longer a theological problem to be solved or people to be `saved' but a potential `means of grace' in which the Christian disciple learns more about God and grows in their relationship with Christ. Part 1 Towards a Practical Theology of Interfaith Engagement 1. Faith, Hope and Love - Pedagogy for Interfaith Engagement 2. Beyond New Contestations - A Practical Theological Challenge to Particularists and Pluralists 3. Interfaith Engagement, Non-Violence and the Way of Salvation Part 2 Challenging Islamophobia, Affirming Multiculturalism 4. Challenging Islamophobia - A Practical Theological Reflection 5. Rejoicing in the Truth - A Practical Theological Affirmation of Multiculturalism