Christian Engagement With Islam

In Christian Engagement with Islam: Ecumenical Journeys since 1910, Douglas Pratt discusses the work of the WCC and the Vatican, Africa’s PROCMURA, ‘Building Bridges’, and the German ‘Christian-Muslim Theological Forum’, together with responses to the ‘Common Word’ letter of 2007.

Clinton Bennett reflects on four decades of engagement with Muslims and Christian-Muslim relations as a missionary, scholar, and interfaith activist. Set in the context of his personal story, chapters discuss a series of critical questions to the Christian-Muslim relationship reprising earlier writing. Bennett asks: can Christians appreciate the prophet Muhammad as a genuine messenger from God or is this theological treason? How might Christians respond to the Muslim claim that Jesus was a prophet and is not God incarnate? Can Christians with integrity regard the Qur’ān as a word from God, and is there any possibility of rapprochement on the issue of whether Jesus died on the cross? Focusing on the United States, Bennett also describes church-sponsored Christian-Muslim initiatives and offers suggestions on how Christians can rethink their ideas about Muslims and cooperate with them in peace and justice advocacy, and social and community development. Exploring some of the causes of Islamophobia, Bennett set out to challenge Christians to keep the commandment not to bear false witness against their Muslim neighbors.

Christian-Muslim dialogue grows increasingly important, but little is known about individual Muslim dialogical thinkers. Born in Palestine in 1921, Ismail al-Faruqi was a leading figure in the development of conversation and debate across faiths in North America in the second half of the twentieth century, and was actively engaged in inter-faith study and dialogue. Al-Faruqi founded the Islamic Studies programme at Temple University, Pennsylvania where several distinguished Muslim intellectuals have taught, such as Seyyid Hossein Nasr, Mahmoud Ayoub and Hasan Hanafi. Along with Kenneth Cragg and Wilfred Cantwell Smith, al-Faruqi was an active participant in Muslim-Christian dialogues in the 1970s and the 1980s. Charles Fletcher here presents the first study dedicated to Ismail al-Faruqi's theory and practice of interfaith dialogue. Analysing al-Faruqi's sometimes provocative ideas on the comparative study of religion, dialogue and practical engagement, the author provides an illuminating study of the life and thought of this important scholar. Tracing the development of al-Faruqi's ideas and practice of inter-faith dialogue, Fletcher shows how Muslim intellectuals engaged in such attempts viewed their role as representatives of the worldwide Muslim community. With perceptive insights into the history of contemporary Muslim-Christian dialogue, this book will be invaluable for all those interested in inter-faith relations, comparative religious studies, North American Muslims and Islamic studies.

What do Christian Churches say Islam is? What does the Church of England say Islam is? And, in the end, what space is there for genuine engagement with Islam? Richard Sudworth's unique study takes as its cue the question of political theology and brings this burgeoning area of debate into dialogue with Christian-Muslim relations and Anglican ecclesiology. The vexed subject of Christian-Muslim Relations provides the presenting arena to explore what political theologies enable the Church of England to engage with the diverse public square of the twenty-first century. Each chapter concludes with an ‘Anecdotes from the Field’ section, setting themes from the chapter in the context of Richard Sudworth’s own ministry within a Muslim majority parish.

Offering an authoritative study of the plural religious landscape in modern Syria and of the diverse Christian and Muslim communities that have cohabited the country for centuries, this volume considers a wide range of cultural, religious and political issues that have impacted the interreligious dynamic, putting them in their local and wider context. Combining fieldwork undertaken within government-held areas during the Syrian conflict with critical historical and Christian theological reflection, this research makes a significant contribution to understanding Syria's diverse religious landscape and the multi-layered expressions of Christian-Muslim relations. It discusses the concept of sectarianism and how communal dynamics are crucial to understanding Syrian society. The complex wider issues that underlie the relationship are examined, including the roles of culture and religious leadership; and it questions whether the analytical concept of sectarianism is adequate to describe the complex communal frameworks in the Middle Eastern context. Finally, the study examines the contributions of contemporary Eastern Christian leaders to interreligious discourse, concluding that the theology and spirituality of Eastern Christianity, inhabiting the same cultural environment as Islam, is uniquely placed to play a major role in interreligious dialogue and in peace-making. The book offers an original contribution to knowledge and understanding of the changing Christian-Muslim dynamic in Syria and the region. It should be a key resource to students, scholars and readers interested in religion, current affairs and the Middle East.

Muhammad Reconsidered rectifies the failures of scholarly attempts to understand Islam in the West and to take Islamic theology seriously. Engaging Islam from deep within the Christian tradition by addressing the question of the prophethood of Muhammad, Anna Bonta Moreland calls for a retrieval of Thomistic thought on prophecy. Without either appropriating the prophet as an unwitting Christian or reducing both Christianity and Islam to a common denominator, Moreland studies Muhammad within a Christian theology of revelation. This lens leads to a more sophisticated understanding of Islam, one that honors the integrity of the Catholic tradition and argues for the possibility in principle of Muhammad as a religious prophet. Moreland sets the stage for this inquiry through an intertextual reading of the key Vatican II documents on Islam and on Christian revelation. She then uses Aquinas's treatment of prophecy to address the case of whether Muhammad is a prophet in Christian terms. Muhammad Reconsidered examines the work of several Christian theologians, including W. Montgomery Watt, Hans Küng, Kenneth Cragg, David Kerr, and Jacques Jomier, O.P., and then draws upon the practice of analogical reasoning in the theology of religious pluralism to show that a term in one religion—in this case “prophecy”—can have purchase in another religious tradition. Muhammad Reconsidered not only is a constructive contribution to Catholic theology but also has enormous potential to help scholars reframe and comprehend Christian-Muslim relations.

This book advances a constructive theological approach to the controversial issues of sharī'a, public law, and secularism in Christian-Muslim relations.