Interfaith Dialogues: Theology, Polemics, and the Politics of Toleration in Multicultural Societies Past and Present
Open discussion forum with Dr. Adnan Husain
Date: Thursday May 22, 2008
Time: 7:00 p.m.
Location: Lower level, Noor Cultural Centre
Admission: $5
What is the purpose of dialogues among representatives of different faith traditions? The search for the true path? Promoting understanding and toleration of differences? To prove the superiority or inferiority of a religion? What is the place of such interreligious dialogue in Muslim tradition? The reasons are and have always been varied. The history of inter-religious discussion is an interesting and instructive one: spanning the medieval majlis of the Caliphs, the disputatio in Catholic Europe and the grand debates of the Mongol Khans to today’s major conferences (like those sponsored by the Vatican or the Alliance of Civilizations) and local discussion circles at churches and community centers. However, the history of religious relations is also closely connected to polemic in all religious traditions. Religious hostility has been expressed in stereotypes and myths like the blood libel and institutions like the Inquisition to today’s Islamophobia. This discussion explores primarily the legacies of Muslim, Christian, and Jewish religious interactions in the Medieval Mediterranean–particularly religious discussion, debate, and polemics. It proposes to use these historical episodes to reflect critically on the contemporary meanings of such encounters, both their ethics and politics, and the possibilities for enhancing spiritual and social understanding.
Adnan Husain is both a Medieval European and Middle Eastern historian. His early work focused on religious phenomena and social imagination in Medieval Catholicism and Islam, particularly on Franciscan spiritual and Sufi mystical traditions. He now principally studies and teaches on the cross-cultural and inter-religious encounters among the Muslims, Christians and Jews of Latin Christendom and the Islamic world in the Mediterranean zone from the tenth to the fifteenth centuries. On these topics, he has published several articles; completed a forthcoming study, entitled Identity Polemics: Encounters with Islam in the Medieval Mediterranean World (1150-1300); and has co-edited a collection, A Faithful Sea: The Religious Cultures of the Mediterranean, 1200-1700, in a new series he edits called “Islam and the West: Influences, Interactions, Intersections.” He is currently at work on a study of the intellectual and religious culture of Muslim diasporic minorities in “the West” from the late Medieval Mediterranean to the Early Modern Atlantic worlds, while co-editing a collection on the cultural history of the Qur’an in translation.
Beyond his core research focus on religious culture and difference in the pre-modern world, he makes strategic forays into modern and contemporary areas of personal and professional interest: Islam and Muslims in Europe and North America, Middle East politics, public and political discourses in “multicultural” societies on race and religion, and the histories of transnational solidarities and resistance culture in the era from decolonization to globalization. He explores some of these issues in a weekly program, “Radio Bandung” (www.radiobandung.blogspot.com), he co-hosts on Queen’s campus radio station (CFRC 101.9 FM, www.cfrc.ca).