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After years of enduring harassment and violence, Egypt’s Christians, the Copts, have seen their situation improve in recent months. The media have become more friendly to Christianity, and plans are being made to purge school textbooks of their hate messages. Certain newspapers have begun to publish articles that try to integrate Christians and their heritage …
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Dr. Küng was invited by the Goethe Institute in collaboration with the Ministry for Islamic Affairs to travel to Tehran last March to speak on Islam and Christianity. As the first Western theologian to be invited to Iran after the Islamic revolution, he had the opportunity to engage in theological discussion with leading ayatollahs and …
Continue reading “A Christian Scholar’s Dialogue with Muslims”
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Delegates to the World Council of Churches’ Faith and Order Commission meeting in Kuala Lumpur in August had the novel experience of seeing their sessions covered in the Malaysian media with the intensity that normally attends national elections or the latest developments in the "Malaysian Idol" competition. Malaysian Christians enjoyed this unprecedented public attention given …
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What would the world look like if the primary solidarities that ordered it were religious rather than national? This is not the world we live in, though there are signs that it’s the one we’re moving toward. Among those signs, ambiguous and interesting, is the public letter sent last May by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, president of …
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Introduction We are on the brink of a frightening ecological disaster. The earth is being destroyed at an alarming speed. It can no longer sustain the rate of our use of its resources. So our relationship with the rest of creation is seriously out of balance. The manifestations of this situation include air, water and …
Continue reading “An Ecological Reading of the Qur’anic Understanding of Creation”
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A while back a Duke student was telling me that he and his roommate were not getting along well. I asked him why. "Because be is a Muslim and I’m not." I asked him how that made a difference. "When we moved in together, he asked me what my religion was. I told him that …
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Debating Muslims: Cultural Dialogues in Postmodernity and Tradition by Michael M. J. Fischer and Mehdi Abedi. University of Wisconsin Press, 600 pp., $49.75; paperback, $23.50. Striving Together: A Way Forward in Christian-Muslim Relations by Charles Kimball. Orbis, 140 pp., $10.95 paperback. Guidelines for Dialogue Between Christians and Muslims, by the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue. …
Continue reading “Between East and West: Confrontation and Encounter”
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ALl, AMEER. The Spirit of Islam. London: Christophers, Ltd., 1949. ANDRAE, TOR. Mohammed: The Man and His Faith. New York: Barnes & Noble, Inc., 1957. ARBERRY, ARTHUR J. An Introduction to the History of Sufism. New York: Longmans, Green & Co., Inc., 1942. _____ The Koran interpreted. 2 vols. London: George Allen & Unwrn, 1955. …
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Books mentioned in the text: Ahmed, A S, Postmodernism and Islam, Routledge, 1992. Al Faruqi, Ismail R. Islam Argus Communications 1979. Arberry, A J, Doctrines of the Sufis, Cambridge University Press. Arberry, A, The Koran Interpreted, Oxford University Press, 1964. Ayoub, M, Redemptive Suffering in Islam, Mouton Publishers, the Hague, 1978. Aziz-us-Saud, U, A Comparative …
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In recent months, a legion of commentators on Islam have emphasized that true Islam has nothing to do with the killing of innocent people. Despite the apparent religious motives of the September 11 suicide bombers, President Bush and others have stressed that “Islam means peace.” But other commentators have responded that Islam is a militant …
Continue reading “Bin Laden’s Reasons: Interpreting Islamic Tradition”
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You’ve said that Christians and Muslims should be trying to work for religious ecumenism. What does ecumenism look like from a Muslim perspective? It depends on which Muslim you ask, of course, as it would depend on which Christian you asked. The word ecumenae means the whole inhabited world. But we seem to have limited …
Continue reading “Cross Meets Crescent: An Interview with Kenneth Cragg”
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(In late 2003 President Bush said, in response to a reporter’s question, that he believed Muslims and Christians "worship the same God." The remark sparked criticism from some Christians, who thought Bush was being politically correct but theologically inaccurate. For example, Ted Haggard, head of the National Association of Evangelicals, said, "The Christian God encourages …
Continue reading “Do Christians and Muslims Worship the Same God? Part Five”
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(In late 2003 President Bush said, in response to a reporter’s question, that he believed Muslims and Christians “worship the same God.” The remark sparked criticism from some Christians, who thought Bush was being politically correct but theologically inaccurate. For example, Ted Haggard, head of the National Association of Evangelicals, said, “The Christian God …
Continue reading “Do Christians and Muslims Worship the Same God? Part Four”
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(In late 2003 President Bush said, in response to a reporter’s question, that he believed Muslims and Christians "worship the same God." The remark sparked criticism from some Christians, who thought Bush was being politically correct but theologically inaccurate. For example, Ted Haggard, head of the National Association of Evangelicals, said, "The Christian God …
Continue reading “Do Christians and Muslims Worship the Same God? Part One”
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(In late 2003 President Bush said, in response to a reporter’s question, that he believed Muslims and Christians "worship the same God." The remark sparked criticism from some Christians, who thought Bush was being politically correct but theologically inaccurate. For example, Ted Haggard, bead of the National Association of Evangelicals, said, "The Christian God …
Continue reading “Do Christians and Muslims Worship the Same God? Part Three”
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(In late 2003 President Bush said, in response to a reporter’s question, that he believed Muslims and Christians "worship the same God." The remark sparked criticism from some Christians, who thought Bush was being politically correct but theologically inaccurate. For example, Ted Haggard, head of the National Association of Evangelicals, said, "The Christian God …
Continue reading “Do Christians and Muslims Worship the Same God? Part Two”
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Commentary since September 11 has produced a cognitive dissonance among Americans about Islam, the world’s second largest religious tradition. On the one hand, selected Muslim leaders declare that “Islam is a religion of peace” and President Bush asserts repeatedly that the U.S. has no quarrel with Islam, “which is a good and peaceful religion.” On …
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Abbasid — Caliphate at Baghdad from 132 (A.D. 750) until the Abbasid dynasty was crushed by the Mongols under Hulagu in 656 (A.D.1158). Adat — in Indonesia, pre-Islamic customs which persist even though not reconciled to Islamic law. Ahmadiyvah — branch of the Qadiani sect founded at Qadian (now in India) by Mirza Ghulam Ahmad …
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I have been involved for 25 years in fruitful conversation with Muslims, and I have read the Qur’an and a lot of literature about Islam. But I confess that Emperor Manuel II Paleologus (Paleologus meaning Old Word) was not on my mind before Pope Benedict XVI launched his entry into the newsrooms of the world. …
Continue reading “Ground Rules for Muslim-Christian Conversation”
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It has become common to use the term "fundamentalism" to refer to certain tendencies and groups in the Muslim world that have been regularly making headlines during the past decade. As a teacher of Islamic studies, I have been extremely ambivalent about this term. My first reaction in the late 1970s was to reject it …
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(ENTIRE BOOK) A collection of essays written by Islamic leaders for Western readers. Chapters describe Islam's origin, ideas, movements and beliefs, and its different manifestations in Africa, Turkey, Pakistan, India, China and Indonesia.
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"If you lose your children, no number of mosques will help you." These words of Jamal Badawi are repeated in one form or another by Muslims all over America. Speaking at an annual meeting of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), Badawi continued: Establishing of Islamic schools, in the environments in which we live, …
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Since the 9-11 terrorist attacks the U.S. State Department has sponsored a number of study programs that bring Muslim scholars from around the world to the U.S. with the aim of showing off the American way of separating church and state, and demonstrating how American society is able to both nurture faith traditions and support …
Continue reading “Muslim Visitors Question the American Way: Puzzled by Pluralism”
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Islam has always conceived a political role for religion, a fact that has increasingly become apparent to Westerners faced with Muslims in their midst. Westerners are caught in a bind in the face of Muslim demands: the logic of religious toleration, not to say of hospitality, requires making concessions to Muslims, while the logic of …
Continue reading “Muslim-Christian Encounters: Governments under God”
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No one really knows the size of Pakistan’s Christian minority, nor of the entire population. The most recent census — conducted in 1981 — gave a rough count of 84 million people of whom not quite a million were Christian. The unofficial 1990 estimate is 108 million, with an explosive birthrate of nearly 4 percent. …
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In outlining the possibilities of Christian thinking in relation to Islam I had in a paper attempted to present my views on the reasons for the lack of enthusiasm about the importance of Christian-Muslim interface for theologizing.1 I had introduced the idea of the different purposes of the Bible and the Qur’an as an approach …
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Prior to September 11, 2001, a substantial majority in the United States approached Islam with a strange kind of detailed ignorance. For many Americans the words Islam and Muslims evoked disjointed images of violence, religious fanaticism, rejection of the modern world, mistreated women, and praying men bowing in the direction of Mecca. Popular Western perceptions …
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Book Review: The Satanic Verses, by Salman Rushdie. Viking, 547 pp., $19.95. The story begins aboard flight Al-420 bound for London from Bombay. Over the skies of London the plane is blown apart by the bomb of a Sikh terrorist, and Gibreel and Saladin tumble out of the skies. As they fall they believe they …
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Book Review: What Went Wrong? Western Impact and Middle Eastern Response. By Bernard Lewis. Oxford University Press, 161 pp. Unholy War: Terror in the Name of Islam. By John Esposito. Oxford University Press, 208 pp. Jihad: The Trail of Political Islam. By Gilles Kepel. Harvard University Press, 416 pp. How shall we speak about Islam …
Continue reading “Speaking of Islam: Muslims and Militants – Three Views”
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While the Prophet Muhammad was in Mecca, preaching against Arabian polytheism, ; he asked: "Have you seen al-Lat, al-Uzza and Manat, the third, the other?" These words are recorded in the Qur’an as part of what Muhammad believed to be direct divine revelation. The Qur’an goes on to ridicule these three supposed deities, condemning them …
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Books Reviewed: Progressive Muslims: On Justice, Gender and Pluralism. Edited by Omid Safi. Oneworld, 384 pp. American Muslims: Bridging Faith and Freedom. By M. A. Muqtedar Khan. Amana, 208 pp. What’s Right with Islam: A New Vision for Muslims and the West. By Feisal Abdul Rauf HarperSanFrancisco, 336 pp. The Trouble with Islam Today: A …
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I was searching for several years before I became a Muslim," says Abdus Salaam, a marketing specialist from Birmingham, Alabama. "I was baptized during this time in the Church of Christ. But I had questions. What bothered me were the white pictures of Jesus and Mary. In Islam we have no pictures, not even of …
Continue reading “Turning to Islam — African-American Conversion Stories”
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When Iran president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad addressed an open letter to George W. Bush in May 2006, he invoked Judgment Day, the day when the deeds of all political leaders will be examined. Ahmadinejad asked Bush whether either of them would be accepted "in the promised world, where… Jesus Christ (Peace Be Upon Him) will be …
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