Islam and the Encounter with Religions

IN PROGRESS 2006-7

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• Kitāb al-masā'il  ("Questions and Answers")

• Iḥtijāj   ("Religious Disputation")

• Islamic Theology (`Ilm al-kalām) 

• The Mu`tazila ("Seceders") and the Mutakallimūn (Rationalist Theologians)

• Polemical refutations (Raddiyya) against the ahl al-kitab

•  Islamic heresiological and associated works

 

Anawati, G. C.

• "Polémique, apologie et dialogue islamo-chrétiens, positions classiques médiévales et positions contemporaines," in Euntes Docete (Rome) 22 (1969), pp. 375-452.

•  "Les grands courants de la pensée religieuse musulmane dans l'Egypte contemporaine," in G. C. Anawati and Maurice Borrmans, Tendances et courants dans l'Islam arabe contemporain, vol. 1 : Egypte et Afrique du Nord: Entwicklung und Frieden, Wissenschaftliche Reihe Vol. 26. Munich: Kaiser-Grünewald, 1982.

 

Bryan, J.,

• Mohammed's Controversy with Jews and Christians, in: MW 9/1919, pp. 385-415

EARLY CHRISTIAN

John of Damascus on Muslim Christian confrontation.

In his The Philosophy of the Kalam Wolfson at one point writes :

"The earliest disputations between Muslims and Christiani at their first meetings consisted merely in bandying Biblical and Koranic verses and in calling each other names. The Muslims, using the Koranic term "associatore" (mushrikiin) for polytheists (2:99) and bearing in mind the Koran's warn ing, "O my son! associate none with God, for, verily, association is a grievous iniquity" (31:12) and also the Koninu statement that the Christians "associate" with God anot hu god by their belief that "the Messiah is a son of God" (9: 30, [p.319>] taunted the Christians by calling them "Associators"  ('eταipιαστai) ,¹ [John of Damascus^, De Haeresibus, 101 (PG 94,768 B)] The Christians retorted by calling the Muslims "mutilators (

κότται) of God," arguing that, inasmuch as Christ is described in the Koran as the Word of God, he was inseparable from God and was God, and consequently the Muslims, by denying that he was God, mutilated God. 2

This is how in the early part of the eighth century, as reported by John of Damascus, Muslims and Christians debated Christian doctrines.

 

 

 

Hava Lazarus-Yafeh, Mark R. Cohen, Sasson Somekh, Sidney H. Griffith (eds.)

• The Majlis, Interreligious Encounters in Medieval Islam ( = Studies in Arabic Language and Literature Volume 4 edited by Sasson  Somekh and Alexander Borg),  Weisbaden: Otto Harrasowitz Verlag, 1999. ISBN 3-447-04041-6

CONTENTS:
H. LAZARUS-YAFEH
Preface................................................................................................7
S. H. GRIFFITH
The Monk in the Emir's Majlis: Reflections on a
Popular Genre of Christian Literary Apologetics in Arabic in
the Early Islamic Period................................................................... 13
S. STROUMSA
Ibn al-Rawandï's su adob al-mujādala :
the Role of Bad Manners in Medieval Disputations........................66
L. E. GOODMAN
Rāzī vs. Rãzĩ — Philosophy in the Majlis....................................... 84
D. J. WASSERSTEIN
The "Majlis of al-Ridā": A Religious Debate in the Court of the
Caliph Al-MaDmun as Represented in a Shīcī Hagiographical
Work about the Eighth Imam "Alī ibn Mūsā Al-Ridā....................108
A. TALMON
Tawaddud — The Story of a Majlis............................................... 120
M. R. COHEN AND S. SOMEKH
Interreligious Majális in Early Fatimid Egypt............................... 128
D. SKLARE
Responses to Islamic Polemics by Jewish
Mutakallimûn in the Tenth Century............................................... 137
B. Z. KED AR
The Multilateral Disputation at the Court
of the Grand Qan Möngke, 1254................................................... 162
W. M. BRINNER
A Fifteenth-century Karaite-Rabbanite Dispute in Cairo...............184
INDEX... . 197

 

 

Sweetman, James Windrow (1891-1966)

·        Islam and Christian Theology. 2 vols. in 4 Pts. London: Lutterworth Press, 1945-67.

·        The Bible in Islam. 1953.