{"title":"The Prophet Muḥammad between Lived Religion and Elite Discourse: Rethinking and Decolonizing Christian Assessments of the <i>uswa ḥasana</i> through Comparative Theological Aesthetics","authors":"Axel M. Oaks Takacs","doi":"10.1080/09596410.2023.2278305","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/09596410.2023.2278305","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACTPrevious Christian assessments of the Prophet Muḥammad generally fall within two categories. The first asks whether or how he may be considered a post-canonical prophet. In the second, both Christians and Muslims sidestep the inquiry and advocate for the ‘two Words’ analogy (comparing Muḥammad to Mary and the Qur’an to Jesus the incarnate Word). However, attending to Muslim lived religion in postcolonial and diasporic contexts reveals an alternative, emic account of the meaning of prophecy and revelation in Islam: the embodied, emplaced and enacted experience of Muḥammad through poetry in praise of the Prophet and Prophetic beauty. Theological aesthetics prepares us for decolonizing Christian assessments of the Prophet Muḥammad through Muslim popular piety and vernacular traditions. A decolonial understanding of the experience of the Prophet suggests that his place in the experience of Muslims is unlike the way Christians relate to prophets, generally, and more akin to how Christians relate to Jesus—in both lived religion and elite discourse. While the ‘two Words’ analogy still has an important role to play, Christians would do well to rethink and decolonize their assessments of the Prophet Muḥammad through the lived religion—and elite discourses—of poetry in praise of the Prophet.KEYWORDS: Qaṣīdat al-BurdaMadīḥ nabawīpoetry in praise of the Prophet Muḥammaddecolonizingcomparative theologyrevelation Disclosure StatementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1 Moreland, Muhammad Reconsidered. See a review of the book in Takacs, ‘Review’.2 The ‘two Words’ analogy is first noted in Schimmel, And Muhammad Is His Messenger, 24. Later scholars extend the analogy; see Nasr, Ideals and Realities, 31; Lumbard, ‘Discernment’; Madigan, ‘Mary and Muhammad’; idem, ‘Muslim–Christian Dialogue’; idem, ‘Jesus and Muhammad’;Takacs, ‘Mary and Muhammad’. It is likewise the premise of the comparative theological project set out in Lamptey, Divine Words, 36–42.3 Lamptey, Divine Words, 38.4 See, for example, Andani, ‘Metaphysics of Muhammad’ for an exploration and the development of this tradition. In the context of Islamic art and how Muḥammad was represented within this tradition of Logos prophetology, see Gruber, ‘Between Logos (kalima) and Light (nūr)’.5 All translations of qur'anic texts are my own.6 As it happens, however, revelation is intimately connected to the beautiful in Catholic accounts of the Revelation, Jesus Christ the Word incarnate, who reveals the beauty and glory of God. Already, one notices how previous Christian assessments in both categories have missed this crucial point, viz., the function of the beautiful in the experience of the Prophet Muḥammad—mainly because of an overcorrection that results in an absolute refusal to compare Muḥammad to the Christian Jesus, the beauty and glory of God incarnate.7 This Christian conception of prophecy is, in general, also how the tradition understood the role of prophet","PeriodicalId":45172,"journal":{"name":"Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations","volume":"13 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-11-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135480123","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Islamic Headscarves: The Other-Religion Effect and Religious Literacy at the European Court of Human Rights","authors":"Nesrin Ünlü","doi":"10.1080/09596410.2023.2275423","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/09596410.2023.2275423","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACTIslamic headscarves continue to be one of the most controversial issues concerning Muslims across Europe. In order to analyse how the headscarf is evaluated through the prism of human rights values and moral principles in Europe, this article revisits some headscarf cases heard at the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR). The weaknesses in the rulings have been widely examined but this article will focus on the religious individual, her agency, and the link between her and her associated group, which have been less discussed in the literature. The article highlights that the modern socio-political structure of the Council of Europe countries is strikingly different from that of their pre-modern counterparts. Thus, the contours of religious groups, the link between an individual and her associated group, and the positioning of various religious groups vis-a-vis the state require a set of approaches to a religious claim centred on the individual believer. This can be clearly observed in the theoretical underpinnings of the European Convention on Human Rights, which, however, are not pursued adequately in practice because the actual rulings not only involve logic but also include perception.KEYWORDS: Religious freedomArticle 9 of the European Convention on human rightsMuslim women and agencysecularismstate neutralitylaw and religion AcknowledgementI would like to thank Kerstin Wonisch for her comments and suggestions.Disclosure StatementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1 See Sullivan et al., Politics of Religious Freedom; Sandberg et al., Research Handbook; Cranmer, et al., Confluence of Law and Religion.2 This article uses ‘Islamic veil’ as a general term referring to all kinds of Islamic modesty choices that Muslim women practise such as headscarves and face veils. The article refers to the particular items (headscarf or face veil) in their respective cases. The four main cases that the article examines involve the headscarf.3 The following ECtHR cases involve pupils in middle and high school: Doğru v France (2008), Köse and Others v Turkey (2006), Kervanci v. France (2008), Aktas, Bayrak, Gamaleddyn and Ghazal v France (2009).4 S.A.S v France, para. 135.5 Ibid.; Lachiri v Belgium, para. 46; see Ringelheim, ‘Lachiri v. Belgium’.6 S.A.S v France, para 122. Similarly, the inadmissibility decision in Al-Morsli v France (2008) concerns only the physical entity of the headscarf in the context of identity checks.7 Kaushik, ‘Lachiri v Belgium’, 51.8 Sahin v. Turkey, para. 17.9 Dahlab v Switzerland, 710 Ebrahimian v France, para. 52; Dahlab v Switzerland, 11; Sahin v Turkey, para. 115; Kurtulmuş v Turkey.11 See, for example, Evans, ‘Islamic Scarf’; Elver, Headscarf Controversy; Brems, ‘Hidden under Headscarves?’; Vakulenko, ‘Islamic Headscarves’; Evans and Petkoff, ‘Separation of Convenience’; Bleiberg,‘Unveiling the Real Issue’; Mahmood and Danchin, ‘Immunity or Regulation?’; Gunn, ‘Religious Symbols in Publi","PeriodicalId":45172,"journal":{"name":"Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations","volume":"91 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-11-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135934673","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Concept of Soul in Judaism, Christianity and Islam <b>The Concept of Soul in Judaism, Christianity and Islam</b> , edited by Christoph Böttingheimer and Wenzel Maximilian Widenka [Key Concepts in Interreligious Discourses 11], Berlin, De Gruyter, 2023, vii+132 pp., €24.95 (paperback), ISBN 978 3 11 074818 5","authors":"Muammer İskenderoğlu","doi":"10.1080/09596410.2023.2273108","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/09596410.2023.2273108","url":null,"abstract":"\"The Concept of Soul in Judaism, Christianity and Islam.\" Islam and Christian–Muslim Relations, ahead-of-print(ahead-of-print), pp. 1–2","PeriodicalId":45172,"journal":{"name":"Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations","volume":"16 7","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136262201","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Fatimids 2: The Rule from Egypt and Shiʿite Rulers, Sunni Rivals, and Christians in Between: Muslim–Christian Relations in Fāṭimid Palestine and Egypt <b>The Fatimids 2: The Rule from Egypt</b> , by Shainool Jiwa[World of Islam], London, I.B. Tauris in association with the Institute of Ismaili Studies, 2023, vi + 238 pp., £9.99 (paperback), ISBN 9780755646753 <b>Shiʿite Rulers, Sunni Rivals, and Christians in Between: Muslim–Christian Relations in Fāṭimid Palestine and Egypt</b> , by Steven…","authors":"Nicholas Morton","doi":"10.1080/09596410.2023.2273109","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/09596410.2023.2273109","url":null,"abstract":"Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes1 Brett, Fatimid Empire.2 Thomson, Politics and Power.3 Notably, Goldberg, Trade and Institutions, and, more recently, Wickham, The Donkey and the Boat.4 Shainool, Fatimids 1.","PeriodicalId":45172,"journal":{"name":"Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations","volume":"94 2","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136261983","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Genoese Predicament: Christian–Muslim Communication in the <i>Annales Ianuenses</i> ( <i>c.</i> 1099–1293)","authors":"Daniel G. König","doi":"10.1080/09596410.2023.2261250","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/09596410.2023.2261250","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACTBuilding on research that presents Jews and Muslims as an integral part of Genoese history, this article analyses the development of Genoese–Muslim interaction in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries to understand the challenges of interreligious communication in the pre-modern Mediterranean. It treats the Annals of Genoa as a collective psychogramme that provides insight into the commune’s shifting attitudes towards Muslims. While acknowledging the Annals’ obvious biases, the article argues that the multiple authors of this work of historiography faithfully depicted the problems encountered by the Genoese in their communication with Muslim interlocutors from the perspective of those in power. Consequently, the Annals allow us to trace how Genoa established cooperative relations with Muslim-ruled North Africa in the wake of the First Crusade and how it successfully weathered turbulences caused by political shifts in the Mediterranean of the late twelfth and early thirteenth century. The Annals suggest that the destabilization of the western Mediterranean and intensifying inner-Christian strife began to jeopardize Genoese communication with Muslim-ruled societies in the 1230s. During the remainder of the thirteenth century, it seems, the commune was torn between different loyalties and thus unable to pursue a coherent communicative approach to Muslim-ruled societies.KEYWORDS: Christian–Muslim relationscommunicationcrusadesGenoainterreligious relationstransmediterranean trade Disclosure StatementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1 Jehel, Les Génois; Jehel, L’Italie et le Maghreb, 38–43, 58–69; Balard, ‘L’empire génois’; Balard, ‘Genoese Expansion’; and Valérian, ‘Gênes, l’Afrique et l’Orient’.2 See, e.g. Jehel, ‘Jews and Muslims’; Amitai, ‘Diplomacy’.3 Imperiale di Sant’Angelo, Caffaro; Holder-Egger, ‘Vorrede’; Caro, ‘Zur Kritik’; Vito, ‘Le glorie di Genova’; Dotson, ‘Genoese Civic Annals’; Dotson, ‘Caffaro’; Hall and Phillips, ‘Introduction’; and Haug, Annales Ianuenses.4 Arnaldi, ‘Caffaro’; Petti Balbi, ‘Caffaro’; and Airaldi and Mallett, ‘Caffaro of Genoa’.5 Annales Ianuenses, vol. 1, 3.6 Airaldi, ‘Nasello, Oberto’.7 Bezzina, ‘Ogerio, Pane’.8 Filangieri, ‘Marchisio Scriba’.9 Nuti, ‘Doria, Iacopo’.10 Overview on the authors in Annales Ianuenses, vol. 1, XXXI–XXXII; ibid., vol. 3, XIV–XVII; and ibid., vol. 4, XI–CXII.11 Ibid., vol. 1, a. 1101, 10, 12.12 Ibid., 12.13 Ibid., 10.14 Jehel, L’Italie et le Maghreb, 13–36; Metcalfe, Muslims of Medieval Italy, 4–69; Kreutz, Before the Normans, 18–101; Pryor, Geography, Technology, and War, 102–8; and Jäckh, ‘848: Decision’.15 Jehel, L’Italie et le Maghreb, 28–31. See König, Arabic-Islamic Views, 290, for the Arabic-Islamic documentation. Also see Liutprandus Cremonensis, ‘Antapodosis’, lib. IV, cap. V, 105.16 Bruce, ‘Politics of Violence and Trade’; Cowdrey, ‘Mahdia Campaign’.17 Caffaro, ‘De liberatione’, 99–100.18 Annales Ianuenses, vol. 1, a. 1101, 10: ‘interfi","PeriodicalId":45172,"journal":{"name":"Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations","volume":"202 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135695479","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Concept of Economy in Judaism, Christianity and Islam","authors":"Abdessamad Belhaj","doi":"10.1080/09596410.2023.2256505","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/09596410.2023.2256505","url":null,"abstract":"\"The Concept of Economy in Judaism, Christianity and Islam.\" Islam and Christian–Muslim Relations, ahead-of-print(ahead-of-print), pp. 1–2","PeriodicalId":45172,"journal":{"name":"Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations","volume":"8 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134912297","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Late Ottoman Origins of Modern Islamic Thought: Turkish and Egyptian Thinkers on the Disruption of Islamic Knowledge","authors":"Erdem Dikici","doi":"10.1080/09596410.2023.2216596","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/09596410.2023.2216596","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45172,"journal":{"name":"Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations","volume":"32 1","pages":"188 - 190"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2023-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"86184457","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb’s Encounter with an Unnamed Monk: From History to Legend","authors":"Ibrahim Zein, A. El-Wakil","doi":"10.1080/09596410.2023.2229615","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/09596410.2023.2229615","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The Ambrosian Library in Milan has preserved thirteen very interesting folios written in an archaic semi-Kūfī Arabic script, describing an encounter between the second caliph of Islam ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb and an unnamed monk. We demonstrate how the anonymous author of this manuscript was familiar with the ṣulḥ agreements, the covenants of the Prophet Muḥammad, and historical and anecdotal accounts of encounters between ʿUmar and ecclesiastical authorities. We postulate that our author composed his narrative on the basis of his own historical imagination from sources that probably belonged to monastic archives to which he had access. The author aimed to deliver a subtle political message, highlighting the archetypal relationship between a Muslim ruler and a Christian subject living under Islam. Two adaptations of our text have been found in Islamic sources, the first in al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī’s Al-zuhd wa- al-raqāʾiq, and the second in Ibn ʿAsākir’s Tārīkh madīnat Dimashq, which we argue reflect a later re-working of the original narrative.","PeriodicalId":45172,"journal":{"name":"Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations","volume":"118 1","pages":"157 - 181"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2023-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"86195948","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Suhrawardī’s Illuminationism: A Philosophical Study","authors":"Noah H. Taj","doi":"10.1080/09596410.2023.2244311","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/09596410.2023.2244311","url":null,"abstract":"governance. Finally, this book should remind us of just how much work needs to be done in writing intellectual history between the late post-classical and early modern periods. Kugle examined 50 manuscript books for this project, which writes the history of one particular community within one maritime zone and over one long century. From West Africa to South Asia, Indonesia and beyond, there is much more Islamic intellectual history to be written, a history neglected for far too long precisely because of Eurocentric and Christian-centric concerns that have prioritized the classical period. I am grateful to Kugle for filling in part of that gap.","PeriodicalId":45172,"journal":{"name":"Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations","volume":"95 1","pages":"200 - 202"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2023-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"80421878","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Concept of Environment in Judaism, Christianity and Islam","authors":"A. Belhaj","doi":"10.1080/09596410.2023.2213108","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/09596410.2023.2213108","url":null,"abstract":"In 1986, an important meeting of Jews, Christians, Muslims, Buddhists and Hindus took place in Assisi to discuss how each religion could contribute to the protection of the environment. In particular, Judaism, Christianity and Islam joined environmentalists and other ethical critics in making the observation that industrialization and consumerism have severely destabilized the eco-system, showing critical ethical concern for the environmental crisis and the future of humanity. Although the Vatican has made a better job of communicating its ecological ethics (Laudato si’, the second encyclical of Pope Francis published in 2015, comes to mind here) than have Judaism and Islam, Jewish and Muslim thinkers, like Christian theologians and philosophers, have also seriously engaged and developed influential theologies of creation, calling for a spiritual transformation of human behaviour in order to protect the environment. For example, Islamic religious authorities contributed to an ethics of ecology in 1983 with the Saudi document entitled ‘Environmental Protection in Islam’, published in English, Arabic and French. A salient dimension of religious engagement with ecology is inter-religious dialogue, as emphasis on the protection of the environment, spirituality and human responsibility are feature of shared wisdom between world religions. The book under review emerged from a conference on the concept of the environment in Judaism, Christianity and Islam, which took place in June 2020 at the Catholic University of Eichstätt-Ingolstadt, organized by the Research Unit ‘Key Concepts in Interreligious Discourses’, (now the Bavarian Research Center for Interreligious Discourses [BaFID] at Friedrich-Alexander-University). The book is divided into three chapters. Chapter 1 discusses the concept of the environment in Judaism, presenting both a biblical account and ecological reflections based on the Jewish tradition. Rabbi Yonatan Neril and Rabbi Leo Dee (both working at the Interfaith Center for Sustainable Development, based in Israel) address the spiritual roots of the ecological crisis, drawing on three main sources: the Bible, rabbinic literature and their ecological commentary on the Bible published in 2022. For the authors, the key Jewish tenets on ecology can be summarized in four principles: the commandment not to waste or to destroy; the oneness of God’s creation and the importance of protecting it and maintaining biodiversity; commandments to rest from creating and altering the environment; and commandments regarding the ethical treatments of animals (9). The authors see in the Bible, and especially in the biblical stories of Noah, Abraham and Jacob, the epitome of wisdom on how humans should build sustainable communities that care for creation and resources, are spiritually aware, and accept stewardship, responsibility and restraint. The chapter criticizes the destructive hand of humankind, almost in a messianic way, especially in the industrial ag","PeriodicalId":45172,"journal":{"name":"Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations","volume":"34 1","pages":"183 - 185"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2023-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"85373964","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}