Events  

Muslim-Christian Dialogue: Challenges and Possibilities
Dr. Amir Hussain

February 14, 2012
7:30-9:00 p.m.
O'Shaughnessy Educational Center Auditorium
St. Paul Campus

Christians and Muslims together make up over half of the world's population.  Their relationship has included periods of violence, but also of cooperation and coexistence.  A prominent Muslim scholar, Professor Hussain, will discuss Muslim-Christian dialogue both historically and in our contemporary world.

Amir Hussain, Ph.D., is professor of theological studies at Loyola Marymount University, a Jesuit university in Los Angeles, where he teaches courses on world religions.  A Canadian Muslim who specializes in the study of Islam, his academic degrees are from the University of Toronto, where he received a number of awards, including the university’s highest alumni award for outstanding service.  He is the author of Oil and Water: Two Faiths, One God, an introduction to Islam and Muslim-Christian dialogue, and more than two dozen book chapters and scholarly articles about Islam and Muslims.  He is also the editor of the Journal of the American Academy of Religion, the premier scholarly journal for the study of religion.  An appointed fellow of the Los Angeles Institute for the Humanities, he has appeared on the History Channel and has given interviews to numerous newspapers and magazines, including Beliefnet.com, The Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, The Toronto Star, and The Washington Post.

Co-sponsored by the Muslim-Christian Dialogue Center and the Jay Phillips Center for Interfaith Learning.

Free and open to the public

   

Reaching Across Faiths:
A Christian and a Muslim Responding to Each Other's Sacred Texts
An Interfaith Conversation Featuring John Del Vecchio and Adil Ozdemir

Thursday, March 29, 12:00 noon to 1:15 p.m.
McNeely Hall 100
University of St. Thomas, St. Paul Campus
Buffet lunch provided free of charge

How can engaging the faith tradition and sacred texts of your neighbor both inspire and challenge dialogue?  Is interfaith engagement of sacred texts outside your own tradition appropriate and should it be encouraged?  These questions will serve as the basis of this interfaith program, which John Del Vecchio conceived after receiving an English copy of the Qur’an from someone in a mixed-faith marriage.

John Del Vecchio, J.D., is an adjunct professor in the ethics and business law department of the Opus College of Business at the University of St. Thomas.  He also teaches history of music industry and music careers in the UST music department.  He operates a private general practice law firm for people with varied backgrounds, incomes, and faiths.

Adil Ozdemir, Ph.D., a native of Turkey, taught Qur'anic rhetoric at Nine September University in Izmir, Turkey, for twenty five years.  Since 2003 he has been teaching courses on Islam at the University of St. Thomas where he also is co-director of the Muslim-Christian Dialogue Center.  He is the co-author with Kenneth Frank of Visible Islam in Modern Turkey (Macmillan).

Sponsored by the Jay Phillips Center for Interfaith Learning, Ethics and Business Law Department, and the Muslim-Christian Dialogue Center

Free and open to the public

Friends of God in Islamic Art and Literature
Dr. John Renard

April 17, 2012
7:30-9:00 p.m.
McNeely Hall (MCH) 100
St. Paul Campus

A colorful illustrated introduction to the major types of "Friends of God" and major themes Islamic hagiography from the medieval to the contemporary. Friends of God have played a role for at least half the world's Muslims roughly analogous to the importance of Saints for about half the world's Christians. As a the "heirs of the prophets" the Friends function as exemplars of devotion and piety, and enjoy immense popularity for hundreds of millions of Muslims from Morocco to Indonesia.

John Renard received his doctorate in Islamic Studies from Harvard University’s Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations in 1978.  Since then he has been teaching courses in Islam, Buddhism, and Hinduism, religion and the arts, and comparative theology in the Department of Theological Studies at Saint Louis University.  Earlier publications include All the King's Falcons: Rumi on Prophets and Revelation (SUNY 1994); Seven doors to Islam and Windows on the House of Islam (California 1996, 1998); and Islam and the Heroic Image: Themes in Literature and the Visual Arts (Mercer, 1999), as well as volumes on Islam, Buddhism, and Hinduism in Paulist Press's "101 Questions" series. His most recent books are Friends of God: Islamic Images of Piety, Commitment, and Servanthood (California, 2008) and Tales of God’s Friends: Islamic Hagiography in Translation (California, 2009), and Islam and Christianity: Theological Themes in Comparative Perspective (California, 2011).


Free and open to the public

Please click here for previous events.