“What Is Truth?” Negotiating Christian Convert Asylum Seekers’ Credibility

The arrival of more than five million refugees in Europe since 2015 has led to increasing investigations into Europe’s management of multiculturalism and religious pluralism. Studies to date have chiefly focused on the integration of the cultural and religious “other,” but we take a different approach by analyzing asylum proceedings in Germany, based on conversions from Islam to Christianity. Negotiations of credibility of newly converted Christian asylum seekers help to show how European legal authorities conceive of their own historically Christian identity and their expectations of newcomers. We show how these negotiations are influenced by the power dynamics in the courts, understandings of cultural and religious contexts, and assumptions about conversion and Christianity. Our interdisciplinary approach provides insights into how European legal authorities navigate the challenge of cultural and religious others to Europe’s cultural cohesion, “values,” and secularism.

Harbingers

This chapter offers a brief but comprehensive review of some of the premodern historical antecedents following the launch of Chicago's Parliament of Religions. It recounts the profile of the Mughal emperor Akbar (r. 1556–1605), who on the cusp of the modern age represents an especially arresting case in his efforts to bring multiple religious voices from the Indian subcontinent, together with European Jesuit missionaries, into conversation with one another. The chapter seeks to spotlight several salient examples of harbingers of interreligious dialogue. It draws preponderantly from Western and, to a lesser extent, Islamic civilizations after the advent of Christianity — with the partial exception of the Mongol court and Akbar. The chapter also emphasizes that not only do the terms interreligious and interfaith not exist in the premodern world, but the same is true for our present-day usage of religion. Ultimately, the chapter discusses the instances of and ideas about conversation/debate/dialogue among various religious groups or individuals that, whether intentionally or not, resulted in mutual understanding or at least bear witness to “religious others” interacting and intellectually taking stock of one another.

Foundations of the Descriptive Study of Religions in Muslim History: A Conceptual Analysis.

The classical Muslim scholarly tradition produced an assortment of literature on different religions including a considerable number of descriptive studies, a phenomenon that leaves imposing questions. Most importantly, how a pre-modern civilization was able to generate a tradition of descriptive scholarship on different religions in the absence of conditions such as the western modernity that supposedly factored the emergence of the modern academic study of religion needs to be explored. The current paper ventures to answer this question. It argues that certain features of the Qur’ānic worldview, such as the repeated invitation to observe the signs of God in time and space through travel in the land/across the world and to ponder upon the history of various nations coupled with the exhortation to use reason generated curiosity about different civilizations of the world as well as their religious heritage. Moreover, the Qur’ānic view of the universality of the religious phenomenon as a divine plan also encouraged a sober disposition towards religious others in cases under discussion. On the other hand, the meticulous historiographical techniques and methods for the interpretation of texts developed by Muslim historians, theologians, and jurists afforded the needed methodological apparatus for the said undertaking. The current paper further concludes that the same epistemology and methodological foundations can be appropriated according to/keeping in view the needs of the time to promote a credible study of religion/s in contemporary Muslim societies

Postcolonial Practice of Interfaith With-ness

An attempt to develop the postcolonial practice of interfaith with-ness as a means of radical protest and resistance against the religious fundamentalism and crony capitalism in India has enormous significance today. The postcolonial practice of interfaith with-ness is not only a theoretical postulation but also a radical with-ness (being with) shared with the religious others. The idea proposes a radical politics of recognition, politics of difference, and politics of creative dialogue, rather than an apolitical “practice of tolerance” on which the traditional idea of interreligious dialogue is grounded. As a humble attempt, several Christian expropriations of the idea are being voiced in this essay with a spirit of religious confidentiality. And, the study uses empire criticism and intersectionality as the primary analytical tools.

How Can You Know the Bible and Not Believe in Our Lord? Guiding Pilgrims across the Jewish–Christian Divide

Drawing on auto-ethnographic descriptions from four decades of my own work as a Jewish guide for Christian Holy Land pilgrims, I examine how overlapping faiths are expressed in guide–group exchanges at Biblical sites on Evangelical pilgrimages. I outline several faith interactions: Between reading the Bible as an affirmation of Christian faith or as a legitimation of Israeli heritage, between commitments to missionary Evangelical Christianity and to Judaism, between Evangelical practice and those of other Christian groups at holy sites, and between faith-based certainties and scientific skepticism. These encounters are both limited and enabled by the frames of the pilgrimage: The environmental bubble of the guided tour, the Christian orientations and activities in the itinerary, and the power relations of hosts and guests. Yet, unplanned encounters with religious others in the charged Biblical landscape offer new opportunities for reflection on previously held truths and commitments. I conclude by suggesting that Holy Land guided pilgrimages may broaden religious horizons by offering an interreligious model of faith experience based on encounters with the other.

Religious Difference and Christian Theology

This chapter introduces and frames the argument for the entire book: Christian theology must understand religious diversity as promise rather than as problem. The chapter then proceeds to lay out conceptually what was articulated allegorically in the introduction, namely that theology of religious diversity, comparative theology, and constructive theology must be integrated. The chapter defines the scope and tasks of each of these three subfields within theology and puts them into conversation. The chapter argues that it is not enough to merely think about others; we must instead think with religious others and think through what is so learned. In sum, we ought not give an account of the other without being transformed by the other through interreligious learning.