While both Islam and Christianity talk of a loving God, Islam relying on the concept of mercy for a more comprehensive and expansive definition of love, in my view there is a profound struc-tural difference in the way love is conceptualised in both religions
From here to the end Siddiqui offers a nice summary of her views on the different Christian and Muslim understandings of love.
lo v ea n d law
Check out Mona Siddiqui's lecture on this topic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YgNBb7Z86C4
Muslim theology and Christian theology both tried to guard God’s unity and transcendence as well as insisting on the gratuity of creation.
From Ayuba - notes on monotheism.
Hear, O Israel, the lord is our God. The Lord is one, you shall love the Lord our God with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your strength (Deuteronomy 6:4–5)
From Ayuba - references to monotheism.
Islam is a simple religion in which submission to God’ s will and majesty encapsulates the very heart of the faith.
From Ayuba: This is rooted in the Muslim declaration of faith and the first Pillar of Islam, and portrays the belief that “there is no God but Allah, and Muhammad is His messenger.”
monotheism ‘is the esoteric mystery behind nearly all the religions with which we are familiar, as well as most of the primitive religions’
From Ayuba: Monotheism is the belief in one God. Although there are some variations in interpretation, Christianity and Islam, the religions that our course is focused on, as well Judaism believe that there is only one God.
every story points to divine justice and mercy, a God who commu-nicates through humanity by sending messengers who came with the same primordial message, that of the unicity of God and the sovereignty of God
This connects Mary to Islamic monotheism and the Muslim understanding of God being revealed to every community from the beginning of time - an Islam being a reminder or return to this primordial message.
Mary, as the Virgin Mother of God, is essentially inimitable, whereas Rachel and Fatima are more realistic models
A key point, that connects to what Amy explained in class.
Jacobites
"Jacobite" is a term sometimes used for the non-Chalcedonian Syriac Orthodox miaphysites (wrongly called monophysite).
Melkites
In this period, Melkite means the Byzantine Chalcedonian church (Greek Orthodox) and not the contemporary Melkite Catholics. The word Melkite relates to "king," and indicates the Christians who followed the emperor in supporting the Chalcedonian definition of Christology.
These three examples of Arab Christian apologetics show how theology became the subject of polemics between Muslim and Christian scholars from the very beginning of Muslim theology, crystallising into intense discussions during the first three centuries of Islam.
A helpful summary of the previous Arab Christian examples. Note that theology specifically became the subject of polemics (we could imagine other subjects of polemic).
While we cannot go as far as to say that in the Islamic context new Christologies were fashioned, we cannot avoid noticing the new emphases and configurations that were given to traditional explanations, which in consequence assumed distinctive forms.
The author recognizes that the Islamic context shaped the Christologies of that period.
Luther’s critique of Muslim doctrine was based on the bedrock of his theology – the incarnation of God in Christ. Luther wrote in Heerpredigt that it was Christological doctrines which distinguished Christianity ‘from all other faiths on earth’.
On Luther, from Bright.
He writes that we are ordained towards a higher good than human fragility can experience in the present life and ‘That is why it was necessary for the human mind to be called to something higher than the human reason here and now can reach.’49 Mu.hammad’s message, however, did not contain this kind of spiritualism and that is why no wise men believed him but only those who were brutal and ‘utterly ignorant of all divine teaching
on Aquinas, from Bright.
Here Thomas touches on several themes which provide a basis for Christian polemics against Islam, but he also adds his own specific critique. Thomas is keen to stress that the ‘truths’ Mu.hammad brought were fundamentally doctrines mixed with falsehoods with no divine supernatural quality to his teachings. Such teachings appealed to desert wanderers. Furthermore, the charge of concupiscence and carnal pleasure as a means of enticing people to Islam featured often in Christian–Muslim polemics and a fundamental accusation of how Mu.hammad ‘seduced’ people to the faith. This is a theme taken up by Thomas in Book 4 in more detail when he discusses life after resurrection. Islam (and Judaism), unlike Christianity, promised people sexual and other pleasures as a reward for virtue whereas Christianity offered eternal bliss
From Bright: p. 121: Re: Thomas Aquinas Summa contra Gentiles:
But one of his greatest criticisms of Christians is in their claim to attribute miracles to their religious leaders be they monks or priests
Statement highlighted by Bright about al-Jabbar.
Muslims may not agree with this belief, but if Jesus is the full expression of the triune God of Israel for Christians, then there has to be some attempt made by Muslims to understand what this belief and devotion means in Christian life and worship
Siddiqui's words to her Muslim readers.
for the purpose of Islamic prophecy, revelation appears but divine distance is main-tained. For Christians, in the Incarnation, God is revealed and the
Key point/explanation of Islamic prophecy.
If the Word united with the body of Christ, why did it not unite with the body of Moses or any of the other prophets?
Bright's first quotation
relationship
Christian-Muslim relations haven't always been tortuous.
Hugh Goddard
Highlight one word, phrase, or sentence below, and click "Annotate." Then explain in one sentence why it is relevant (to our reading of Goddard's book, to your understanding of history, to your approach to Christian-Muslim relations, etc."
Be sure to read the preface.
Nestorians around Mosul, angry at a mere child's elevation ascatholicos, broke from the church and acknowledged the Latin Pope astheir spiritual head.15In the aftermath of the schism, the patriarchal see ofthe ``traditionalist'' faction moved to the village of Qudshanis (Kochanes inBritish and American missionar ycorrespondence) in the heartland of theNestorian tribal confederations, amidst the almost impenetrable mountainsof what is toda ythe Turkish province of HakkaÃri.16The pro-Catholicfaction retained the name Chaldean while the traditionalists in the moun-tains simpl ycalled themselvesSuryani, helping to confuse outsiders as tothe theological distinctions between Nestorians and Jacobites
Chaldeans = Assyrian Catholics. They unified with Rome but retained their East Syriac liturgy in worship.
Joan Scott
How does Kent's analysis of gender, and her historical approach, compare to Scott's?
"On ne sait de quelgenre il est, s'il est mále ou femelle, se dit d'un homme très-caché, dont on neconnait pas les sentiments."2
We do not know what gender (or kind) he is, whether he is male or female, this can be said of a very private man whose feelings are unknown.
limits
For Foucault, the relations of subordination within which we live actually create and enable our ability or agency to resist those same relations of subordination/domination. This is why he raises the question of limits here.
It may be helpful to consider Saba Mahmood’s summary of Foucault on “subject formation” in Politics of Piety, p. 17: “Power, according to Foucault, cannot be understood solely on the model of domination as something possessed and employed by individuals or sovereign agents over others, with a singular intentionality, structure, or location that presides over its rationality and execution. Rather, power is to be understood as a strategic relation of force that permeates life and is productive of new forms of desires, objects, relations and discourses (Foucault 1978, 1980). Secondly, the subject, argues Foucault, does not precede power relations in the form of an individual consciousness, but is produced through these relations, which form the necessary conditions of its possibility. Central to his formulation is what Foucault calls the paradox of subjectification: the very processes and conditions that secure a subject’s subordination are also the means by which she becomes a self-conscious identity and agent…” So the abilities that define a subject’s modes of agency are “not the residue of an undominated self that existed prior to the operations of power but are themselves the products of those operations.”
delair
From Anya Fredsell: Charles-Pierre Baudelaire (1821-1867) was a French poet and art critic who is known for his prose poetry and as a crucial link between romanticism and modernism. Baudelaire's most reputable collections include Les Fleurs du mal (1857; The Flowers of Evil) and Petits poèmes en prose (1868; “Little Prose Poems”). Although many of his works were unpublished or out of print at the time of his death, his followers in the Symbolist Movement contributed to his fame as a great 19th century poet. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Charles-Baudelaire
Habermas
Bio by Karma Lama: Jürgen Habermas (1929-present) is a German philosopher and sociologist known for his work on communicative rationality and the public sphere. He has engaged with Gadamer, Putnam, Foucault, Rawls, Derrida, and Brandom, among others. He is best known for his publications The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere (1962) and The Theory of Communicative Action (1981). He is considered one of the most influential thinkers alive. He has stated that the Enlightenment is an "unfinished project.”
FOUCAULT
Michel Foucault (1926–1984) was a French philosopher and historian known for his work on structuralism and post-structuralism and his critiques of modern knowledge production. He engaged with Kant, Heidegger, Hegel, and Marx, among others, and is known for the following publications: History of Madness and Medicine (1961), The Order of Things (1966), The Archaeology of Knowledge (1969), Discipline and Punish (1975), and The History of Sexuality (1976). See https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/foucault/.
Kant
Immanuel Kant (1724–1804), who wrote in German, is a key figure in modern Philosophy who has influenced many fields of study including metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, political philosophy, aesthetics, and religion. Kant's emphasis is on human autonomy. According to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, in Kant's view, "scientific knowledge, morality, and religious belief are mutually consistent and secure because they all rest on the same foundation of human autonomy, which is also the final end of nature according to the teleological worldview of reflecting judgment that Kant introduces to unify the theoretical and practical parts of his philosophical system." See https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kant/
.
Read up to here, then skip to page 56.
A
Begin reading again here.
Habermas
Bio by Karma Lama: Jürgen Habermas (1929-present) is a German philosopher and sociologist known for his work on communicative rationality and the public sphere. He has engaged with Gadamer, Putnam, Foucault, Rawls, Derrida, and Brandom, among others. He is best known for his publications The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere (1962) and The Theory of Communicative Action (1981). He is considered one of the most influential thinkers alive. He has stated that the Enlightenment is an "unfinished project.”
Foucault
Michel Foucault (1926–1984) was a French philosopher and historian known for his work on structuralism and post-structuralism and his critiques of modern knowledge production. He engaged with Kant, Heidegger, Hegel, and Marx, among others, and is known for the following publications: History of Madness and Medicine (1961), The Order of Things (1966), The Archaeology of Knowledge (1969), Discipline and Punish (1975), and The History of Sexuality (1976). See https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/foucault/.
6
Talal Asad (b. 1932 in Saudi Arabia) is an influential American cultural anthropologist and scholar of religious studies who currently holds the position of Distinguished Professor of Anthropology at the City University of New York. Asad challenged dominant paradigms in anthropology and religion with his 1986 publication titled "The Idea of an Anthropology of Islam" and his book Genealogies of Religion (1993). More recently, Asad focused on secularism as a topic of anthropological study in his book Formations of the Secular: Christianity, Islam Modernity (2003).
Kant
Immanuel Kant (1724–1804), who wrote in German, is a key figure in modern Philosophy who has influenced many fields of study including metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, political philosophy, aesthetics, and religion. Kant's emphasis is on human autonomy. According to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, in Kant's view, "scientific knowledge, morality, and religious belief are mutually consistent and secure because they all rest on the same foundation of human autonomy, which is also the final end of nature according to the teleological worldview of reflecting judgment that Kant introduces to unify the theoretical and practical parts of his philosophical system." See https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kant/
t~!es~.i\tn,(}~gtl1em·1s·contemp<>rarr, ~audi Arabia.
Stop reading here.
th India, it did so because of its capacity to forge links with the religions and peoples of the wider society, to offer a form of access to the divine which could be grasped and built upon through means which were 3.lready present within these societies. When this interpenetration took place, it was neither 'degene-rate' nor a product of superficial 'accretions' from Hinduism. In south India this sharing of belief and practice was built up into a dynamic and expansive religious system, and it deserves to be understood in its own right rather than as a hangover from the convert's past which must inevitably fade away as soon as the local Muslim populati
Key argument
tional 'Islamic' observances. Muslim saint cult festivals were slotted into the region's existing Hindu sacred calendar; in the Tamil country, as chapter 3 will show, such celebrations were organised on similar principles to those of local Hindu temple rites. There was also the development of a local literary and devotional t
One reason why Bayly offers such extensive information about South Indian god and goddess traditions in Ch. 1.
nawabs
Muslim provinces
Coromandel coast
Southeastern coast of India, opposite to the western Malibar coast where Syrian Christianity developed.
describe Indian variants of Muslim practice and belief on their own terms, rather than as 'degenerate' or 'superstitious' deviations from the so-called Islamic norm (a concept which is usually applied to the forms of Islam which are now current in the Middle East.
Key approach
religion and the history of 'convert' groups is best discussed in relation to the organisation of state power in south Asia.
This statement is fleshed out in chapter 1 focus on links between political and cultic power.
roups who did not opt out of the indigenous moral order; on the contrary, the behaviour and social organisation of these converts continued to reflect perceptions of caste rank, 'honour' and ritual precedence which were shared throughout the wider society of the two regions. (For a discussion of these concepts see below, p. 35.) Such groups did not necessarily receive Christianity as a consequence of European colonial domination, and again it must not be assumed that European expansion was the sole historical force affecting Christian converts or the wider society of south India. These people did see themselves as Christians and were recognised as persons of distinct and separate religious identity. Even so they were not identified as an i"solated 'minority' community cut off from the rest of the south Indian population so much as a Christian sect or caste within that society, and one which retained many critical south Indian notions, particularly those which concerned the nature of divine power and the supernatural. What did conversion mean for such groups, and what determined the depth and nature of their relationships with other communities around them?
Bayly's different approach, in comparison to previous studies.
conversion
A key theme in recent studies on colonial and missionary encounters. The studies mentioned here may be useful reference points in the future.
What we shall see is that in practice the two religions were capable of being radically reshaped to suit the needs of a society which revered pantheons of fierce goddesses and warrior heroes, and a social system which came increasingly to emphasise hierarchies of caste rank and inherited status.
Bayly's argument. How does this compare to Arun Jones' approach in "Missionary Christianity and Local Religion"?
This study seeks to challenge both of these assumptions by asking what religious conversion really meant in south Indian society over the last three centuries
The book's aim.
PFEFFERAnthropologists
See the information highlighted below about Pakistani Christians in Muslim-majority Punjab, mainly converts from lower-caste Hindu backgrounds. We might question the author's tone and choice of expression at some points, but this provides a helpful overview of Pakistani Christianity in the Punjab (a region partitioned between India and Pakistan; the capital of Pakistani Punjab is Lahore).
upward mobility
An interesting set of descriptors. Punjabi Christians experienced: conversion, emancipation, upward mobility
blasphemy
We'll return to the question of blasphemy laws in Pakistan later in the course.
a new haven had been created by the missionaries for these lowest of the low, a small and insulated world in which they were the insiders and other Punjabis remained outside. In its optimal version this new social cosmos consisted of two castes only, that of affl uent, informed and benevolent foreign patrons, and that of their grateful and ever more successful local clients
So conversion to Christianity brought a different "caste" hierarchy
The Chuhra caste was responsible for the rather sudden and rapid expansion of Christian churches in the province during the last 80 years of colonial rule, while only very few higher-caste
Mostly lower castes converted to Christianity.
Druzes
The largest Druze community is in Mount Lebanon. The Druze tradition originated from a branch of Shi'ism.
SunniMuslim authorit y
Sunnis are the majority in the Ottoman Empire and most other places, and the Ottoman rulers were Sunni. Masters doesn't say much about Shias. For Sunnis, religious authority centered instead on the Caliph, the political successor of the Prophet Muhammad (who was understood as the guardian of the Islamic faith, but not as a spiritual guide like the Shia Imams. See my comment on Shias below, on page 59).
Shica authorities
Persia/Iran had become largely Shia by this period. Large Shia communities exist also in Iraq, Bahrain, and Lebanon. "Twelver" Shias (or those who trace the spiritual/political successors of the Prophet Muhammad to the twelfth Imam) are the largest Shia branch. For Sunnis, religious authority centered instead on the Caliph, the political successor of the Prophet Muhammad (who was understood as the guardian of the Islamic faith, but not as a spiritual guide like the Shia Imams).
Jizyarecord
Jizya records - records of the special tax non-Muslims paid - are one way historians can track these demographics.
Sephardic Jews
who migrated/fled to the Ottoman Empire from Spain after the Inquisition
here was a movement ofChristians awa yfrom rural areas, with the possible exception of MountLebanon, and a transformation of the Christian population in the regionfrom a largel yrural one to one that was increasingl yurban. Flight from theland was a realit yfor Muslim peasants of the Fertile Crescent as well, as thecountryside became unstable in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuriesdue to tribal incursions into formerl yagricultural lands. There was adifference, however. The Muslim population was still overwhelmingl yruralat the end of the nineteenth century; the same could not be said for theChristians. Everywhere in the Fertile Crescent, the Christians were be-coming, like their Jewish neighbors, an urban population, leaving onlypockets of Christian villagers scattered across the rural landscape. Thispattern of an increasing urbanization contrasts sharpl yto that whichoccurred in the same period in Egypt where the Copts were under-represented in the population of Cairo in the eighteenth centur yand werestill largel yrural in their choice of settlemen
rural-urban migration patterns
Armenianswere ubiquitous in the demographic mix of the cities of the Arab MiddleEast. It was, however, onl yin the trading cities of Aleppo and Basra thatthe Armenians came to constitute an important numerical component ofthe overall Christian population, before the tragic deportations of theAnatolian Armenians in the earl ytwentieth centur y.
Armenian Apostolic Church (also called Armenian Orthodox). There are also now Armenian Catholics and Armenian Evangelicals (Protestants).
Copts of Egypt comprised the other numerically large Christiancommunit yin the Ottoman Arab territories with perhaps between ten to®fteen percent of Egypt's total population, estimated variously at the timeof the Ottoman conquest to be between two and three million people.21Their spiritual head, the Patriarch of Alexandria, had long before 1517moved his actual see to Cairo. As was the case with the Jacobites and theArmenians, the Copts had embraced the Monophysite de®nition of Christ'snature and had been persecuted under the Byzantines
Coptic Orthodox
The Orthodox Christian Arabs of Syria were called Melkites (malakiyyun,``the king's men'') in the earl ycenturies of Arab rule.
This is not the way the term Melkite is used today. See below.
s Iranian Armenians
Christians
after contact with American and British archaeologists excavating ancientNinevah, the traditionalists chose to call themselves Assyrians
Assyrians is a term used by a number of denominations (Assyrian Church of the East, Chaldeans, as well as Protestants who came out of this tradition)
or more simpl ytheSuryaniin Arabic and Ottoman Turkish, the Jacobiteswere Monophysite Christians and the ideological heirs to the bitter theo-logical battles waged within Christendom in the ®fth centur yAD to de®nethe nature of Christ. The Monophysites, who chose to emphasize Christ'sdivine nature at the expense of his human one, lost the theological battle atthe Council of Chalcedon in 451. Thereafter, the ywere relegated to theranks of heresy and obscurity, in the eyes of the dominant Nicene Christiantradition represented both in Constantinople and Rome
Better to call them Syrian Orthodox or Syriac Orthodox. Jacobite is an outdated term, and insiders usually prefer the term "miaphysite" since "monophysite" was originally a pejorative and in their view inaccurate understanding of their theology. The Coptic Orthodox and the Armenian Orthodox shared a similar theology and were also called monophysite.
diversity
To get a sense of the religious diversity (and the differences within particular religious groups) scan the highlighted text below. Most of Masters' details relate to various Christian sects. I also noted a few historical points that may be helpful.
Nestorian Christians (Kildanior alter-nativelyNasturiin Arabic and Ottoman Turkish, later to be known asAssyrians in the West) living beside the Jacobite villagers in the plains to thenorth of Mosul, most notabl yin the large village of Telka yf. The Nestorianswere followers of a theological tradition anathematized b ythe OrthodoxChristian mainstream in 431 at the Council of Ephesus for their emphasison the human nature of Christ.
The term Nestorian is pejorative. This community is the Assyrian Church of the East today (it is centered on the East Syriac rite/liturgy, similar to the West Syriac rite/liturgy of the Syriac Orthodox Church). The community calls itself Assyrian.
Maronites had abandoned Syriac in favor of Arabic as theirvernacular
Syriac remained the liturgical language
acobite population retained Aramaic as a spokenvernacular well into the Ottoman period.
Aramaic = Syriac
The Maronites were thespiritual descendants of Christians who had accepted the articulation ofChrist's nature (monotheletism) put forward in the attempted compromisebetween orthodox yand monoph ysitism b ythe B yzantine EmperorHeraclius (610±41
Maronites had also united with the Catholic communion by the early medieval period
B y1600, most of the Arab lands were nominall ysubject tothe Ottoman sultan
Timeline