Ednan Aslan Livres

This multidisciplinary volume unites research on diverse aspects of Jewish-Muslim relations, exchanges and coexistence across time including the Abrahamic tradition enigma, Jews in the Qur’an and Hadith, Ibn al-‘Arabi and the Kabala, comparative feminist theology, Jews, Christians, Muslims and the Gospel of Barnabas, harmonizing religion and philosophy in Andalusia, Jews and Muslims in medieval Christian Spain, Israeli Jews and Muslim and Christian Arabs, Jewish-Muslim coexistence on Cyprus, Muslim-Jewish dialogues in Berlin and Barcelona, Jewish-Christian-Muslim trialogues and teleology, Jewish and Muslim dietary laws, and Jewish and Muslim integration in Switzerland and Germany. 

In this volume, the authors attempt to speak freely about the potential in religions both for violence and peace. I am confident that many impulses from this work will also impact the direction of churches and other religious communities, such that religions, all together, will try to mobilize the members of their communities to actively contribute to world peace. In this way, religions will be perceived as part of the solution for world peace, enabling them to move beyond the stigma of their damaged reputations.

Religious and ethnic diversity have become crucial and pressing concerns in Europe: in particular, the presence of Muslims, their integration, citizenship, and how to deal with the influx of refugees. Can we draw on the resources of religions and their leaders for models of peaceful coexistence or do religious identities constitute obstacles to cooperation and unity? This volume treats “Islam, Religions, and Pluralism in Europe” based on a 2014 conference in Montenegro. Experts analyze Islam and Muslim issues as well as Christian perspectives and state social policies. Case studies drawn from Western and Eastern Europe including the Balkans, constructively review and interrogate diverse theological, philosophical, pedagogical, legal, and political models and strategies that deal with pluralism.

The scholarly contributors to this volume investigate various means to stimulate and facilitate reflection on new social relations while clarifying the contradictions between religious and social affiliation from different perspectives and experiences. They explore hindrances whose removal could enable Muslim children and youth to pursue equal participation in political and social life, and the ways that education could facilitate this process.

Through history, Islam was the dominant religion and source of legitimation for ruling entities in diverse contexts where cultures and religions thrived in harmony. Today, the presence of Muslims as citizens in secular societies poses challenges, either by belonging to minorities in Western countries with long secular traditions or by comprising minority or majority populations in post-communist East European and Central Asian societies, where secular values are being revised. As Muslims reconceive the role of religion in their lives in those contexts, Islamic education acquires importance. It assists the young, especially adolescents, in learning to identify more fully with local realities with the intention of building sense of inner connectedness through which they may truly take part in and be of service to society. The contributors to this volume explore how the religious and secular, as well as the traditional and modern intersect in Islamic educational institutions that benefit Muslims and their societies by averting extremism and promoting cohesion.

This pioneering volume defines the contours of the emerging engagements of Muslim women scholars from around the world with the authoritative interpretive traditions of Islam, classical and contemporary. Muslima theology, here broadly defined to encompass a range of interpretive strategies and perspectives arising from multiple social locations, interrogates Islamic scripture and other forms of religious discourse to empower Muslim women of faith to speak for themselves in the interests of gender justice. Contributions provide an overview of the field at this juncture-ranging from pioneering Muslim scriptural feminism to detailed analyses of legal and mystical texts by a new international cohort of Muslim women academics and activists. Contemporary female Muslim „constructivist“ approaches articulate concerns with diversity, including race and religious pluralism, paralleling developments in womanist and mujerista readings of religious texts.

Following 9/11 and the growth of religiously legitimated violence in Islamic countries, the focus of public discussion moved to imams and teachers of religion as actors supporting Muslim isolation and the lack of willingness to integrate – imams became central figures in the debate on Islam. With great enthusiasm, politicians discovered them to be the scapegoats of a failed integration of Muslims in Europe. Integrated imams trained in Europe were to promote Muslim integration, prevent violence, resolve contradictions between society and Muslims and further Islamic enlightenment. With this objective an attempt was made, on the one hand, to rediscover the existing institutions for imam training in Balkan states and, on the other hand, to establish new educational institutions at European universities to train Europe-compliant imams. Due to their central role in the lives of Muslims, the training of imams and teachers of religion is given an important role in the process of Muslim integration.

This volume is a result of the conference «Islamic Textbooks and Curricula in South East Europe» held in Sarajevo, 21st to 25th October 2010. One of the aims of the conference was to critically assess the existing curricula and textbooks for Muslim education in Europe and to discuss the directions textbook and curricular development needs to take in the near term. This critical assessment and visioning took place in dialogue with the experiences of long-established churches and religious communities. The conference concluded that an emphasis on the European characteristics of Islam is essential in religious education.

Die Präsenz der MuslimInnen in Europa ist eine besondere Herauforderung für die hiesige Politik und die heutige Gesellschaft. Die steigende Zahl der MuslimInnen und der Moscheen in Europa, sowie nicht zuletzt die muslimischen SchülerInnen an den öffentlichen Schulen, stellen eine unvorhergesehene Herausforderung für Politik, Wirtschaft und Gesetzgebung dar. Für die MuslimInnen ihrerseits besteht die neuartige Erfahrung vor allem darin, als Minderheit in einer pluralistischen Gesellschaft zu leben und sich als Teil dieser Gesellschaft zu identifizieren und in ihr zu partizipieren. Unter den besonderen Bedingungen Europas kommt der Erziehung muslimischer Kinder im Prozess der Verheimatung in Europa eine besondere Bedeutung zu, damit die hier heranwachsenden MuslimInnen mit dieser neuen Heimat identisch verwachsen. Ohne das Gefühl einer inneren Verbundenheit, kann man der Gesellschaft nicht wirklich dienlich sein. Eine islamische Erziehung hat die Aufgabe den Kindern diesen Wandel deuten zu helfen, sodass eine europäische Identität in einer säkularen, pluralistischen Gesellschaft in einem offenen Dialog mit der eigenen Tradition möglich sein wird. MuslimInnen haben die Aufgabe, den europäischen Kontext in ihre religiöse Erziehung zu integrieren und sich vom Rand der Gesellschaft in deren Mitte zu bewegen. Diese Publikation möchte die entstandenen vielfältigen Debatten in der islamischen Erziehung in Europa offenlegen und auf den Wandel unter den MuslimInnen hinweisen, dass nämlich die MuslimInnen verstärkt auf die europäischen Werte Rücksicht nehmen und sich dementsprechend organisieren.

The authors of this volume examine theory and practice regarding past and present roles of Jewish, Christian and Islamic religious education in nurturing tolerance, interpreted as mutual respect for and recognition of other groups, in Eastern (Albania, Bulgaria, Kosovo, Macedonia, Moldova, Montenegro and Romania) and Western (Finland, Germany, Italy, Latvia and Spain) Europe, Israel, Nigeria and Uzbekistan. They also explore potential roles of religion and exclusivism in fostering (Islamic state, NGOs, etc.), but also averting (Islamic legal theory, authority, Sufism, etc.) radicalization, and of secular states in allowing, but also banning minority religious education in public schools. With contributions from Friedrich Schweitzer, Martin Rothgangel, Gerhard Langer, Daniela Stan, Arto Kallioniemi, Juan Ferreiro Galguera, Maria Chiara Giorda, Rossana M. Salerno, Viorica Goraş-Postică, Constantin Iulian Damian, Valentin Ilie, Dzintra Iliško, Ayman Agbaria, Zilola Khalilova, Raid al-Daghistani, Osman Taştan, Moshe Ma’oz, Adriana Cupcea, Muhamed Ali, Rüdiger Lohlker and Dele Ashiru. The Editors Ednan Aslan is the Chair of Islamic Theological studies at the University of Vienna where he is a Professor for Islamic Education. Margaret Rausch is scholar, researcher and university instructor in the field of Islamic and Religious Studies.