Academic literature on the topic 'Interfaith Relations'

Religion was regarded as a marginal factor by scholars of International Relations for a long time. The main reason for this ignorance is that the discipline of International Relations has followed the major paradigm - secularization thesis - in social sciences until recently. This resulted in ignorance of religion as an explanatory factor in International Relations. However, this situation has recently started to change. Beginning from 1990s, the role of religion in international relations has started to be reexamined<br>and secularization theory has started to be criticized. On the other hand, religion has started to be regarded as a tool for peacebuilding, at the same time. In addition to its contribution to conflicts and wars, religion is increasingly seen as a potential tool for peaceful cooperation<br>and inter-religious dialogue is becoming a part of diplomacy and conflict resolution policies. Within this context, interfaith dialogue is a case which shows the extent of the change in the discipline of IR regarding the role of religion. This thesis aims to make a comprehensive discussion on the historical and contemporary relation between religion and international relations by focusing on the role of interfaith dialogue, specifically dialogue initiatives within the EU and the UN. The dialogue projects of these institutions and their relation with security-driven policies are examined. Thus, the main concern of this study is to raise a question about the role of interfaith dialogue, especially the one proposed by the institutions above, in transforming the role of religion in international relations.

The social space of interaith relations in India is commonly represented in the academia, the media and the everyday discourse through the paradigm of communalism. This thesis considers it an analytical and socio-political discursive space, grounded on reified religious communities and their mutual relations. Thus, similar to ethnicity and ethnic conflict, communalism tends to reproduce the discourse of Hindu vs. Muslim as a given of social relations, configuring the very conflict narrative it attempts to explain. This study proposes a shift in perspective, trying to situate the paradigm of communalism in the social space and processes in which it is articulated and that it contributes to reproduce. By relying on existing critical literature on Indian nationalism, secularism, caste and communalism and on feminist perspectives on power, conflict and identity this thesis focuses on the interconnectedness of gender and socio-economic dimensions in nalTatives of interfaith relations. It elaborates an argument of communalism as a discourse of domination and social polarisation, reproducing social boundaries of a majoritarian, patriarchal and socioeconomically asymmetric order and veiling social tensions over the positioning of different sections of society and relations of super/subordination among them. The conflict nalTative of communalism is located within the discursive landscape of Indian colonial and post-colonial society, structuring and naturalising forms of domination and social polarisation across gender and socio-economic dimensions. By exploring the urban space of Hyderabad (Deccan), this research de constructs the conflict nalTative of communalism in its different themes and articulations, conceiving of gender and socio-economic differentials as organising principles for social relations, participating in the configuration of social boundaries but also of the possibilities for transcending them. In fact, while providing a perspective on the naturalisation of relations of super/subordination through the narrative of Hindu-Muslim conflict/harmony, this study P9ints at possibilities to imagine alternatives to the dominant paradigm. Multiple tensions over forms of domination and social polarisation find expression in the discourses and practices of interfaith relations, questioning the relative positionings assigned to different sections of society within and between religious communities' boundaries. In that sense, they expose and challenge the dominant language, meaning and practice of social relations. This study aims at reflecting on conflicts as socio-political and analytical paradigms reproducing discourses of and about power. It then proposes to look within and beyond dominant conflict narratives, at the social tensions articulating possibilities for a change in the discourse and practice of social relations and their representation.

Interfaith peace-building is an important step toward increased economic development in Kenya. The use of conflict resolution strategies as components of an international effort for development has become an important topic of research and debate over the past two decades. Within the category of interfaith relations, Christian-Muslim interactions may represent some of the most relevant to development in the world today. Since both focus on expansion through conversion, Christianity and Islam often seem to be in direct "competition for souls," socio-political power, or spheres of influence. The unique history and geographical situation of Kenya is also analyzed, as well as some of the underlying psychological causes of interfaith tensions and distrust. Information collected in Nairobi and Mombasa Kenya in the Fall of 2011 is examined as a case study of Christian-Muslim relations in coastal Kenya. Possible peace-building solutions are suggested from the academic literature on the topic.

Prior to September 11, 2001, a calculated image problem related to America’s defence strategy in the Near East and its foreign policy of exceptionalism culminated in its unfavourable perception in the Muslim world. To counter this setback, leading think-tanks recommended that US public diplomacy must lead the way in order for America to reclaim its positive image. During the Bush administration, this guidance was applied through the expansion of public diplomacy measures such as the State Department’s “Brand America” campaign and the “Shared Values Initiative”. Whilst they were successful at applying secular approaches to engaging international Muslim audiences, both campaigns failed to reach the core of Islamic society. This study contends that to reach this core, the crucial requirement must be to apply direct communicative engagement with local networks in order to restore trusted relations. In defining a new way forward, this study breaks new ground by examining the origin of this problem for America from the angle of communication. By acknowledging the many setbacks caused by various public diplomacy measures, we examine the prospects for the State Department in applying the post-secular communication strategy, Interfaith Diplomacy, to enrich political communication between US diplomats and key religious players in the Muslim world. Findings reveal that communication training under an Obama administration is essential for improving US-Muslim world relations, and this requires the recruitment of a Religion Attaché Officer Corps within the United States Foreign Service. A new Religion Attaché, equipped with a background in broad religious affairs and communication training in Interfaith Diplomacy, is likely to make significant headway in counteracting the tension caused by the US-Muslim world communication problem.

Includes abstract.<br>Includes bibliographical references.<br>This research argues that public preaching by Muslims and Christians reflects their positions in the public sphere, and indicative of the competition between them. From a perceived marginalized position, Muslims want to prove that Christians err on the basis of Biblical and Qur'anic texts. Pentecostal Christian preachers, on the other hand, extend their religious spaces into the public sphere and invite Kenyans in general, and mainline Christians in particular, to recommit themselves to Jesus. The preaching of both Muslims and Christians has potential and real negative effects for public order.

The question of who is participating in today’s debate around theologies of other religions is important. Religious difference and the many ways of dealing with it are issues in political, social and theological initiatives. The reality of religious plurality in daily life leaves some Christians wondering about the best way to relate to non-Christian neighbors. In light of this, a series of questions emerges about who is shaping conversations with people of other faiths and what priorities they reflect. A Lutheran voice is lacking in this debate. Despite this, there has been a wide response from other Christian traditions. In some cases denominations have raised questions of religious pluralism as a theological issue, while elsewhere individual theologians have contributed to the debate. The project that follows will examine such contributions from three ecclesial traditions (Roman Catholic, Evangelical and Protestant) and individual theologians in order to chart some common concerns in the theology of religions debate. In an effort to highlight a tradition-constituted approach to the other, connections will also be made between individuals’ positions and their ecclesial traditions. This thesis will also propose a distinctively Lutheran theology of religions first by using the works of Martin Luther to introduce the Lutheran history of engagement with non-Christians. Then, Lutheran statements and resources, partnerships and institutions will be examined to discover the ways in which the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America engages non-Christians. Finally, this project will propose crucial elements for a specifically Lutheran theology of religions. These elements will be put in conversation with individual Lutheran theologians who have made contributions to the debate. Ultimately a theology of kinship will emerge. Using distinctively Lutheran themes, this theology recognizes a connection between all people and calls Lutherans to live in kinship with the religious other.

This thesis examines how women negotiate their identification within and as a group when engaging in interreligious dialogue. It is an in-depth case study of the women’s interfaith book groups, the Daughters of Abraham, located in the Greater Boston Area. This focus facilitates an in-depth understanding of the dynamics of relationships within one group, between different groups, and as situated in the American sociocultural context. I explore the tensions arising from religious diversity, and the consequences of participating in an interreligious dialogue group for understandings of religious self and others. Categories such as boundary, power, sameness, difference, self and other serve to explore the complexities and fluidity of identity constructions. I answer the following questions: How do members of the Daughters of Abraham engage with the group’s religious diversity? How does their participation in the Daughters of Abraham affect their self-understanding and understanding of the “other?” What can we learn about power dynamics and boundary drawing from the women’s accounts of their participation in the Daughters of Abraham and from their group interactions? Two interrelated arguments guide this thesis. One, I show that Daughters members arrive at complex and fluid understandings of what it means to identify as an American Jewish, Christian, and Muslim woman by negotiating various power dynamics arising from ideas of sameness and difference of religion, gender, and sociopolitical values. Two, I contend that the collective emphasis on commonalities in the Daughters of Abraham is a double-edged sword. Explicitly, this stress intends to encourage engagement with the group’s religious diversity by excluding those deemed too different. However, whilst this emphasis can generate nuanced understandings of religious identity categories, at times it highlights differences detrimental to facilitating such understanding. Moreover, this stress on commonalities illuminates the power dynamics and tensions characterizing this women’s interfaith book group. Scholarship has by and large overlooked women’s interreligious engagements with explicit ethnographic studies of such being virtually non-existent. This thesis addresses this gap by using ethnographic methods to advance knowledge about women’s interreligious dialogue. Furthermore, it pushes disciplinary discourses by speaking to the following interlinked areas: Jewish-Christian-Muslim relations, formalized interreligious dialogue, interreligious encounters on the grassroots level, women’s interreligious dialogue, a book group approach to engaging with religious diversity, and interreligious encounters in the American context post-September 11th 2001.

This thesis focuses on two issues among the many comprising the broad subject of the relationship between Jews and non-Jews according to Jewish law. The issues are: (1) the prohibition against selling real estate in the land of Israel to non-Jews; and (2) the prohibition against intermarriage.<br>The prohibition against selling real estate in the land of Israel to non-Jews is based upon a Rabbinic interpretation of the phrase "lo Tehanem" from Deut. 7:2. In the period of the "Rishonim" (from Maimonides till Radbaz) the general view was that this prohibition was still in force and applied to contemporary non-Jews. From the beginning of the modern era, however, this prohibition, as a result of the new reality facing the struggling Jewish settlement in the land of Israel, became problematic.<br>The prohibition against intermarriage underwent a reverse development. During the Talmudic period most of the Rabbis, guided by the context of the Biblical text, argued that the Biblical prohibition only concerned the "Seven Nations" who used to live in Canaan at the time of the conquest and the settlement. But at the beginning of the modern era a rabbinic consensus gradually emerged that this Biblical prohibition related not only to the "Seven Nations" or "Ancient Pagans", but to all non-Jews at all times. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)

Cette thèse de doctorat retrace les trajectoires personnelles, scolaires et professionnelles des jeunes musulmans, étant nés et ayant grandi en France et en Allemagne, qui partent en Turquie pour étudier la théologie, à travers un programme interétatique, destiné à la formation des cadres religieux musulmans natifs et appelé « théologie internationale ». Retournant dans les pays de leur naissance avec un diplôme d’État, ces jeunes sont engagés par les associations religieuses en tant qu’imam-khatib, prédicateur, enseignant du Coran ou responsable des mosquées. Notre travail inscrit ces trajectoires dans un contexte européen marqué par un « problème de l’imam », dont la solution serait une « formation adéquate » sous le contrôle des États séculiers, qui cherchent à réguler la « nouvelle religion de l’Europe ». Sur la base d’une recherche empirique réalisée en France, Allemagne et Turquie, la thèse analyse ce processus, à l’échelle nationale, en tant que moyen d’intégrer les musulmans à la société globale par une reconnaissance de leurs revendications religieuses, les renvoyant dans le même temps à leurs communautés spécifiques. Dans la mesure où l’État séculier requiert un interlocuteur bien délimité afin de pouvoir nationaliser l’islam et « naturaliser » les musulmans, le cadre des structures juridico-politiques existantes les oblige à se définir comme des communautés religieuses. Ce processus dévoile les soubassements éminemment chrétiens de la laïcité française et de la sécularité allemande, deux modèles différents de sécularisme européen ayant des difficultés à accommoder les structures historiquement établies régissant les relations État-Église afin d’y inclure l’islam. À l’échelle de la subjectivité, cette thèse explore les manières dont les politiques gouvernementales assujettissent ces « imams-théologiens natifs », dans les deux sens du mot : à la fois en faisant d’eux des sujets tout en les soumettant aux nouvelles techniques de gouvernementalité, dont le but est de fabriquer des acteurs musulmans « compatibles » avec les démocraties européennes . Ces jeunes cadres religieux musulmans exercent leur capacité d’agir dans les interstices de nouveaux désirs et d’anciens liens : la volonté de servir l’islam en français et en allemand, d’une part, et la nécessité de reconfigurer leurs relations complexes avec la langue turque et la Turquie, d’autre part, mais aussi avec les institutions religieuses appartenant aux premières générations d’immigrés. Leurs engagements au sein des mosquées européennes et des centres de dialogue interreligieux créent également de nouveaux espaces, dans lesquels l’islam turc en Europe ainsi que les frontières entre les trois monothéismes européens sont en cours d’être redéfinies par des élaborations théologiques comparatives. De manière plus générale, ce travail aborde les enjeux que la nouvelle pluralité religieuse pose à la fois aux États séculiers et aux acteurs religieux, conduisant les uns vers une désabsolutisation de la laïcité ou de la sécularité comme la norme hégémonique régissant les relations États-religions, et incitant les autres à une redéfinition théologique de leur religion respective à pied d’égalité<br>This Ph.D. dissertation describes personal, academic and professional trajectories of young Muslims, born and raised in France and Germany, who attend Turkish universities through an interstate program for the training of native Muslim religious personnel called “International Theology.” Returning to their countries of birth, after having a B.A. degree in theology, these young Muslims are employed by religious associations as imam-khatib, preacher, Coran teacher or representative of mosques. This work places their trajectories within a European context in which imams or religious leaders have come to be regarded as a problem even a threat, whose solution is to be found in “proper training” under the control of the secular states seeking to regulate “Europe’s new religion” more efficiently. Based on empirical research in France, Germany and Turkey, the dissertation analyzes this process as a means of integrating Muslims to the larger society by recognizing some of their religious claims while at the same time sending them back to their particular community. Since the secular state needs a well-defined representative body as an interlocutor for the nationalization of Islam and “naturalization” of Muslims, integration to the larger society requires defining Islam as a religion and Muslims as a “religious community” within the framework of existing legal-political structures. This process reveals the well-entrenched Christian underpinnings of French laicity and German secularity, which represent two different systems of European secularism. Both have difficulties adapting Islam to fit within long established structures that have historically managed State-Church relations. At the subjective level, the dissertation explores the ways in which governmental policies empower young Muslims as the “native imams-theologians” while at the same time subjecting them to new techniques of governmentality, which aim at constituting Muslim subjects “compatible” with European democracies. The main argument of the dissertation is two-fold. First, these young Muslim religious personnel exercise their agency in the interstices of new desires and old ties: to serve Islam in French or in German, on the one hand, and, on the other, to reconfigure their complex relations with the Turkish language, with Turkey, and with the institutions built by the first generations of Turkish migrants in Europe. Second, their engagements in the European mosques and at the centers of interfaith dialogue create new spaces in which Turkish Islam in Europe is being redefined along with the boundaries between the three monotheisms. At a more theoretical level, this work broaches the stakes of religious plurality in the twenty-first century, driving European governments to de-absolutize their secular norms in dealing with religions and ushering in new religious social actors, Muslim as well as Christian, to re-theologize interfaith relations on more equal terms