Christian Muslim Research Articles

For Christian Eyes Only? The Intended Audience of the Martyrdom of Antony Rawḥ

The Arabic account of the early medieval Passion of Antony Rawḥ is a remarkable source for the character of Abbasid-era Muslim–Christian relations in that, although it recalls an instance of intercommunal violence, the account itself suggests a profound familiarity among Christian audiences with the defining communal narratives of the early Muslim umma. What is more, certain specific uses of language and apparent allusions to Muslim texts may also reveal this text as one intended for mixed audiences of Christians and Muslims. This only becomes apparent, however, when we read the Passion of Antony Rawḥ in tandem with certain contemporary Muslim texts recalling the personalities and events of the first/seventh-century Arab conquests, texts that recent research suggests were themselves crafted in accordance with much older late ancient hagiographic traditions.

Churches at War: The Impact of the First World War on the Christian Institutions of Jerusalem, 1914–20

The purpose of this article is to discuss the role and status of the Christian churches in Jerusalem from the beginning of the twentieth century until 1920 when British Military Administration of Palestine came to an end, with a particular focus on the First World War period. The first part of the article provides some historical background on a number of crucial issues: the history of the Christian churches in Jerusalem, the relationship between the churches and the Ottoman authorities, competition with the European powers for the control of the Holy Places, the Status Quo and the capitulations which were the most important political features of Christian Jerusalem until 1914. The case study of the Custody of the Holy Land explains the impact of the war on Christian institutions during and after the conflict, particularly in 1918 when the Custody rebuilt its influence in the city and on the international stage. The second part of the article focuses on the war period and the creation of the Christian–Muslim associations which, to an extent united the Arab population of the city providing a different example of the impact of the war on the Christian institutions of Palestine and Jerusalem.

Bridges Instead of Walls: Christian–Muslim Interaction in Denmark, Indonesia and Nigeria – Edited by Lissi Rasmussen

Religious Studies ReviewVolume 35, Issue 1 p. 44-44 Bridges Instead of Walls: Christian–Muslim Interaction in Denmark, Indonesia and Nigeria – Edited by Lissi Rasmussen Robert O. Smith, Robert O. Smith Baylor UniversitySearch for more papers by this author Robert O. Smith, Robert O. Smith Baylor UniversitySearch for more papers by this author First published: 06 March 2009 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1748-0922.2009.01318_36.xRead the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat Volume35, Issue1March 2009Pages 44-44 RelatedInformation

Post-9/11 Arab and Muslim American Community College Students: Ethno-religious Enclaves and Perceived Discrimination

Apart from the widescale media attention that Arabs and Muslims have received in the United States and abroad since 9/11, these two target populations have been largely unexamined at both the two-year and four-year college levels. This study represents a pioneering effort in investigating whether the post-9/11 backlash against Arabs and Muslims has penetrated community college campuses, focusing upon the inter-relationships among the level of perceived discrimination, the degree of diversity of Arab and Muslim students' campus friendships, and their sense of belonging to the college. Two conflict theories are advanced to explain why perceived discrimination might promote ethnic and religious clustering among Arab and Muslim community college students. The study employs a mixed methods design consisting of a 92-item survey and three focus groups. The survey sample consists of 753 Arab Christian, Arab Muslim, and non-Arab Muslim students from 21 community colleges in Southern California and Southeast Michigan. The primary finding was that there was a modest but positive relationship between the level of perceived discrimination and the percentage of campus friends who are of the same ethnicity but different religion. Student focus groups furnished insight into some students' reluctance to report discrimination in surveys. The implications of the study are to develop sensitive measures of the campus climate that draw out more subtle forms of discrimination. Also desirable would be to expand upon the existing research on the denial or minimization of personal discrimination.

The World Council of Churches in Dialogue with Muslims: Retrospect and Prospect

The World Council of Churches (WCC) has been involved in a variety of inter-religious dialogue projects and initiatives over many years. Dialogue with other religions—or with the peoples of those religions—is of significance and import, not least because of the value placed upon peaceful co-existence and harmonious inter-communal relations. However, of all bi-lateral endeavours, it is arguably the arena of Christian–Muslim relations which has been, and remains, the most challenging, problematic, and pressing for the Christian community at large—and, complementarily, for the Muslim umma also. This article attempts an overview of development in Christian–Muslim dialogue undertaken under the auspices of the WCC since around the mid-twentieth century. Early explorations, when the prospect of dialogue with Muslims was being canvassed, will be discussed. A significant 1972 consultation will be noted, followed by a review of salient features pertaining to the extension of the field of engagement in Christian–Muslim dialogue, and a note on some difficulties and challenges encountered. A comment on a sequence of regional events undertaken during the 80s will precede a discussion of developments in the clarification of issues that took place during the 90s. Finally, issues and challenges that are evident in the opening years of the third millennium of the Common Era will be briefly touched on.

An Intercultural Dialogue between the Muslim Taifa of Denia and the Christian County of Barcelona in the Eleventh Century

AbstractPoints of dialogue increased across the Muslim–Christian Iberian frontier over the course of the eleventh century. Rulers on both sides pursued policies of active communication, through violent and pacific means. This is especially evident in the relations between Denia and Barcelona. The growing Mediterranean interests of both polities brought them into frequent contact through trade, diplomacy and conflict. In fact, the intercultural entente established between the rulers of Denia and Barcelona allows for a much broader view of Iberian Muslim–Christian relations within the context of the eleventh-century Western Mediterranean.

Methodists and Muslims in the Gambia

The Gambia (West Africa) is a predominantly Muslim country, with a small Christian community. Christian–Muslim encounters in the Gambia can be traced back as far as the fifteenth century. This article explores part of this long interreligious history of the Gambia. It researches – on the basis of archival materials – the attitudes and perceptions of the Gambian Methodist Church towards Muslims in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The article argues that, although the attitude of the Methodists towards Muslims changed in the middle of the twentieth century from aggressive evangelization towards more irenic relations, Methodism in the Gambia still perceives Christian witness to Muslims to be one of its core callings.

Beyond convivencia: critical reflections on the historiography of interfaith relations in Christian Spain

While Américo Castro’s convivencia remains an influential concept in medieval Iberian studies, its sway over the field has been lessening in recent years. Despite scholars’ best efforts to rethink and redefine the concept, it has resisted all attempts to transform it into a workable analytical tool. The article explores the malaise affecting convivencia, and suggests that the idea has become more of an impediment than a help to medieval Iberian studies. It argues that convivencia retains some of its former influence because scholars insist on understanding it as a distinctly Ibero‐Islamic phenomenon. However, this article suggests that the evidence for Islamic influence on interfaith coexistence in Christian Spain is scarce. Instead of continuing to embrace the nationalist myth of Spain’s unique status in medieval Europe, scholars need to acknowledge the basic similarities in the Christian treatment of religious minorities north and south of the Pyrenees. The article also explores other aspects of convivencia’s problematic legacy: polarization of the field between “tolerance” and “persecution,” and the inattention to the nuances of social and political power relations that affected Jewish–Christian–Muslim coexistence in Christian Iberia.

Explaining the Cause of Muslim-Christian Conflicts in Indonesia: Tracing the Origins of Kristenisasi and Islamisasi

Within the last decade, Indonesia has experienced numerous incidents of communal violence between conservative Muslims, who are the religious majority in the country, and the Christian minority. This has been caused by mutual prejudices and suspicions that have gradually developed between the two groups. This article will explain the origins of such sentiments by looking at the history of Muslim–Christian relations in Indonesia. It argues that the origins of tensions between the two religions date from the Dutch colonial period in Indonesia and persisted throughout Indonesia's post-independence history. First, the article will survey the roots of Kristenisasi suspicions among Indonesian Muslims, from the Dutch colonial period until the New Order regime under Suharto. Next, it will examine government policies designed to appease conservative Muslims and restrict the religious freedom of Indonesian Christians. Finally, it will discuss how these policies helped to create the fear of Islamisasi among Indonesian Christians.

Choix linguistique et modernité islamique au Cameroun

This paper discusses the interplay between Islam, Arabic and Fulfulde in Cameroon with regard to a dual relationship based on competition and cooperation. Language plays a predominant role in the relationship between the universality of the Islamic dogma and the contextualized interpretations of it. The exploration of the cross-currents of fulanization [Fulfuldization] of Arabic and Arabization of Fulfulde, the interference between the linguistic activism of Christian missions and Muslim militants and the relation between orality and writing shed light on the internal and external dynamics and on the modes of invention/reinvention of a certain modernity. The proponents of the Islamic tradition and the militants of modernity maintain a realistic relationship, translated at the linguistic level into mixing and mutual influences between Arabic and Fulfulde.

Süleyman Nazif's ‘Open Letter to Jesus’: An Anti-Christian Polemic in the Early Turkish Republic

The recent ‘cartoon crisis’ caused by European newspapers that published disrespectful caricatures of the prophet Muhammad and offended Muslims all over the world, intensified the discussions on ‘the clash of civilizations’. The present religious quarrels, as distressing as they are, remind us of the uproar Süleyman Nazif (1870–1927), a Muslim Turkish nationalist caused in Turkey in 1924. At that time the bone of contention was not a cartoon but the ‘Open Letter to Jesus’ Nazif published followed by his ‘The Reply of Jesus’ and in both of which he condemned the ‘crusader mentality’ of the Christian world. Being political satires, these letters reflect the views of Süleyman Nazif on the imperialist European powers, show his attempt to defend the newly founded Turkish Republic and illustrate how relations between Turkey and Europe had been deepening the prejudices of Muslims and Christians toward each other. This contribution presents translations of Nazif's two letters, preceded by an overview of Muslim–Christian polemics in the late Ottoman Empire and the early Turkish Republic.

Pensée 2: Sectarianism as Imagined Sociological Concept and as Imagined Social Formation

In 1978 Barbara Pillsbury and I dedicated our coedited book, Muslim–Christian Conflicts: Economic, Political and Social Origins (Westview), with these words: “To those who struggle to demystify religion and to those who suffer and die because the struggle is yet unfinished.” Charles Issawi observes in his preface that the contributors to the volume tend to interpret the conflicts more in economic and political terms than in “religious” terms. In an effort to develop analytical tools, my introduction distinguishes between “religion/religious identity and consciousness” (as theology/theological consciousness) and “sect/sectarianism” (as social organization, relationships, dynamics/group identity, and consciousness). I argue that sectarianism is about how “differences” are constructed; because people can believe they are very different when they are not, the task of the scholar is to describe what differences do exist, how they emerged, and why people believe they are different. Differentiation is a process, I suggest, that operates through the everyday—through socialization, through family systems, and through various other aspects of social organization in both systematic and erratic or contradictory ways.

Christian Marabout, Soldier Monk: Charles de Foucauld between the French and the Tuareg

The life of Père Charles de Foucauld (1858–1916) epitomized many of the motifs and contradictions of French colonialism in North Africa: a cavalry officer turned incognito explorer of Morocco, he eventually renounced his worldly life and became a deeply ascetic Catholic monk, spending the last fifteen years of his life in the Algerian Sahara, primarily among the Muslim Tuareg population of the Ahaggar region. Foucauld remained close to the French military, but his approach to Christian–Muslim relations changed and matured over his time in Algeria. The present study examines Foucauld's complex relationship with colonialism and with the Tuareg during his lifetime, as well as his unexpected legacies in the present. In the Maghreb today, he is remembered for his work as a lexicographer and grammarian of the Tuareg language and its unique tifinagh alphabet – a contribution that was taken up and expanded upon by later Amazigh cultural revivalists. In addition, the Vatican in recent years has held Foucauld up as a model for interreligious dialogue and as a bridge between the Catholic Church and the Muslim world.

Muslim–Christian Dialogue in Britain and Beyond

My intention in this talk is simply to offer some very basic reflections on how the dialogue between faiths has evolved in the British situation over the last ten to twenty years. But I want to put...

How Could So Many Christians Be Wrong? The Role of Tawātur (Recurrent Transmission of Reports) in Understanding Muslim Views of the Crucifixion

The concept of tawātur (recurrent transmission of reports) underpins the usual Muslim view that reports that Jesus was the one crucified are not reliably transmitted. This article first outlines Muslim theories regarding tawātur, along with two other classifications of reports, mashhūr and āḥād. Second, the writings of al-Ghazālī (d. 505/1111) and Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī (d. 606/1209) on tawātur and the crucifixion are examined. Third, the wider significance of the concept for Muslim–Christian discussion is explored. The study concludes that the exact place of tawātur in Muslim discussions of the crucifixion is elusive. Its role is secondary to that of the qur'anic text itself (as commonly interpreted) as the decisive element in rejecting Jesus as the one crucified. Yet understanding tawātur helps to clarify the theoretical foundation of the Qur'an's primacy for Muslims, since the scripture of Islam is understood to be the supreme mutawātir text.

Media bias during extreme intergroup conflict: the naming bias in reports of religious violence in Indonesia

Although the media are regularly charged with bias, empirical evidence of media bias is variable. The aim of the current research was to explore the utility of an intergroup perspective to understanding media bias as it emerges in the context of intergroup conflict. Content analysis was conducted on accounts of ongoing Christian–Muslim conflict in Ambon, Indonesia, as reported in both Christian and Muslim newspapers. This revealed the operation of a ‘naming bias’, whereby both Christian and Muslim newspapers were more likely to explicitly name the religious outgroup as perpetrators of intergroup conflict than they were to attribute responsibility to their own group. The prevalence of this bias was, however, asymmetrical across the two groups: it was pronounced in the Muslim newspaper but minimised in the Christian one. This pattern was evident in a general sample of media reports, and in a sample of matched reports in which the same incident was covered by both papers. The naming bias and its variable operation is explained with reference to social psychological theorising about intergroup dynamics.

Said Nursi on Muslim–Christian Relations Leading to World Peace

This article examines the views of Bediüzzaman Said Nursi (1876–1960), specifically with regard to Muslim–Christian relations. It elaborates on his view as presented in his commentary on certain qur'anic verses (specifically 2:2 and 5:51), the first of which indicates that the devout are those who believe in both the Islamic and pre-Islamic revelations, while the second prohibits Muslims from taking Christians and Jews as friends. Nursi's interpretation is unique among all Islamic commentators. The article also discusses qur'anic texts in light of Nursi's famous Damascus sermon, in which he strongly advocates Muslim–Christian cooperation. Finally, the article gives examples from the life and writings of Nursi as references for his understanding of Muslim–Christian relations and the possibility of the cause of world peace being advanced through such positive relationships.

Research Note: Anti-Semitism and Superstition

Superstitions and anti-Semitism are generally based on irrational beliefs. To date, no research has examined the relationship between anti-Semitism and superstition. Four groups, Arab-Muslim, Arab-Christian, Non-Arab Muslim, and Non-Arab Christian, responded to anti-Semitism and superstition measures. With respect to anti-Semitism scores, Arabs scored higher than non-Arabs and Muslims scored higher than Christians. Superstitions varied, however, with Arabs endorsing more New Age beliefs, while Muslims endorsed more traditional superstitious beliefs. The correlations between anti-Semitism and superstitious beliefs were significant, but low, and are explained in terms of cultural differences.

One family, two religions: child belief or child grief in Christian–Muslim families?

This article deals with the results and further consequences of my empirical investigation of Christian–Muslim families and their children in Germany. It gives an insight into the religious world of 4‐ to 12‐year‐old children in Christian–Muslim families through the analysis of evaluated interviews and drawings concerning religious practice and the image of God. Through the presentation of different aspects such as prayer, the image of God, gender issues, religious practice and affinity, the question of children’s own needs is discussed.

Pluralität und Pluralismus: Zu Kontexten und Grundformen des christlich-islamischen Dialogs in Deutschland

The fact that Islam is now the second religion of Germany, as with much of Western Europe, raises profound questions. What does it mean for the self-understanding of both Christians and Germans within Germany, as well as for the life of the nation? What constitute key impacts and effects of this relatively new situation? What are the consequences for understanding and thinking? And what comprises the key context for the situation of, as well as critical reflection upon, the phenomenon and development of Christian–Muslim interreligious dialogue? In this paper the authors explore dimensions of the fact of plurality and the cognitive response to it that issues in the paradigm of pluralism. The paper takes account of critical theological and philosophical considerations together with the perspectives of cultural theory and reflection upon the context of Christian-Muslim dialogical engagement in Germany.