Islam, Christianity, and Judaism share several common features, including their historical origins in the prophet Abraham, their belief in a single divine being, and their modern global expanse. Yet it is the seeming closeness of these “Abrahamic” religions that draws attention to the real or imagined differences between them. This volume examines Abrahamic cultures as minority groups in societies which may be majority Muslim, Christian, or Jewish, or self-consciously secular. The focus is on the relationships between these religious identities in global Diaspora, where all of them are confronted with claims about national and individual difference. The case studies range from colonial Hong Kong and Victorian London to today’s San Francisco and rural India. Each study shows how complex such relationships can be and how important it is to situate them in the cultural, ethnic, and historical context of their world. The chapters explore ritual practice, conversion, colonization, immigration, and cultural representations of the differences between the Abrahamic religions. An important theme is how the complex patterns of interaction among these religions embrace collaboration as well as conflict—even in the modern Middle East. This work by authors from several academic disciplines on a topic of crucial importance will be of interest to scholars of history, theology, sociology, and cultural studies, as well as to the general reader interested in how minority groups have interacted and coexisted. “This is a groundbreaking collection of original, learned, and cutting-edge essays on various aspects of the three major monotheistic religions in modern times. The subjects of the essays range across the globe, from Hong Kong and South Asia to Victorian Britain and Weimar Germany, and teach us to see each tradition, and all three traditions together, in new and original ways. A distinctive contribution.” —Steven T. Katz, Boston University “Judaism, Christianity, and Islam is remarkable for bringing together accessible scholarly essays, each with keen insight, exploring the diverse ‘Abrahamic’ cultures and their complex interactions. As the human landscape of Europe continues to evolve, this superb series of engagements with the past and present is an indispensable guide.” —Michael Berkowitz, University College London “Gilman remains an unparalleled expert at identifying cutting-edge, interdisciplinary research. The essays in this superb volume provide urgently needed comparative and theoretical examinations of the constructed natures of Christianity, Islam, and Judaism, and the complex and challenging relationships they engender.” —Lisa Silverman, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

An examination of the practice and philosophy of sacrifice in three religious traditions In the book of Genesis, God tests the faith of the Hebrew patriarch Abraham by demanding that he sacrifice the life of his beloved son, Isaac. Bound by common admiration for Abraham, the religious traditions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam also promote the practice of giving up human and natural goods to attain religious ideals. Each tradition negotiates the moral dilemmas posed by Abraham’s story in different ways, while retaining the willingness to perform sacrifice as an identifying mark of religious commitment. This book considers the way in which Jews, Christians, and Muslims refer to “sacrifice”—not only as ritual offerings, but also as the donation of goods, discipline, suffering, and martyrdom. Weddle highlights objections to sacrifice within these traditions as well, presenting voices of dissent and protest in the name of ethical duty. Sacrifice forfeits concrete goods for abstract benefits, a utopian vision of human community, thereby sparking conflict with those who do not share the same ideals. Weddle places sacrifice in the larger context of the worldviews of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, using this nearly universal religious act as a means of examining similarities of practice and differences of meaning among these important world religions. This book takes the concept of sacrifice across these three religions, and offers a cross-cultural approach to understanding its place in history and deep-rooted traditions.

This book represents the culmination of David Nirenberg s ongoing project; namely, how Muslims, Christians, and Jews lived with and thought about each other in the Middle Ages, and what the medieval past can tell us about how they do so today. There have been scripture based studies of the three religions of the book that claim descent from Abraham, but Nirenberg goes beyond those to pay close attention to how the three religious neighbors loved, tolerated, massacred, and expelled each otherall in the name of Godin periods and places both long ago and far away. Whether Christian Crusaders and settlers in Islamic-ruled lands, or Jewish-Muslim relations in Christian-controlled Iberia, for Nirenberg, the three religions need to be studied in terms of how each affected the development of the other over time, their proximity of religious and philosophical thought as well as their overlapping geographies, and how the three neighbors define (and continue to define) themselves and their place in the here-and-nowand the here-afterin terms of one another. Arguing against exemplary histories, static models of tolerance versus prosecution, or so-called Golden Ages and Black Legends, Nirenberg offers here instead a story that is more dynamic and interdependent, one where Muslim, Jewish, and Christian communities have re-imagined themselves, not only as abstractions of categories in each other s theologies and ideologies, but by living with each other every day as neighbors jostling each other on the street. From dangerous attractions leading to interfaith marriage, to interreligious conflicts leading to segregation, violence, and sometimes extermination, to strategies of bridging the interfaith gap through language, vocabulary, and poetryNirenberg aims to understand the intertwined past of the three faiths as a way for their heirs to coproduce the future."

There has never been a more important time for a study of the social, economic and political origins of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, three important world religions which share a common root. This book takes as its starting point the idea that gods, angels, miracles and other supernatural phenomena do not exist in the real world and therefore cannot explain the origins of these faiths. It looks instead at the material conditions at appropriate periods in antiquity and the social and economic forces at work, and it examines the historicity of key figures like Moses, Jesus and Mohammed. This is a unique book which draws on the research, knowledge and expertise of hundreds of historians, archaeologists and scholars, to create a synthesis that is completely coherent and at the same time is based on real-world social conditions. It is a book by a non-believer for other non-believers, and it will be a revelatory read, even to those already of an atheist, agnostic or secularist persuasion.

The eighth volume of the series "Key Concepts of Interreligious Discourses" investigates the roots of the concept of "peace" in Judaism, Christianity and Islam and its relevance for the present time. Facing present violent conflicts waged and justified by religious ideas or reasons, peace building prevails in current debates about religion and peace. Here the central question is: How may traditional sources in religions help to put down the weapons and create a society in which everyone can live safely without hostilities and the threat of violence? When we take the Sacred Scriptures of Judaism, Christianity and Islam into consideration it becomes obvious that the term "peace" and its equivalents in Hebrew, Greek and Arabic describe, at first, an ideal state based on the "love" / "mercy" of God to his creation. It is a divine gift that brings inward peace to the individuum and outer peace resting upon justice and equality. One main task of Jews, Christian and Muslims in the history is to find out how to bring down this transcendent ideal upon earth. The volume presents the concept of "peace" in its different aspects as anchored in the traditions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. It unfolds commonalities and differences between the three monotheistic religions as well as the manifold discourses about peace within these three traditions. The book offers fundamental knowledge about the specific understanding of peace in each one of these traditions, their interdependencies and their relationship to secular world views.

This text seeks to provide a guided examination of what unites and divides the Jewish, Christian, and Islamic communities. With over twenty-five years of experience teaching in the subject area, Dr. Fritz Wenisch begins to unravel this complex and often contentious topic by first discussing the legal injunctions applying to religious studies courses at secular U.S. universities. He investigates the type of monotheism each religion shares before providing an in-depth overview of each religion one by one. An emphasis is placed on the specific teachings of each religion, with consideration given to their practices and their historical development. "Judaism, Christianity, and Islam: Differences, Commonalities, and Community" argues that the hostility between the three religions is misplaced. The argument is grounded on the existence of a shared belief in the same one and only God and reverently looking back to Abraham, as well as the fact that disagreements do not result from ill will, but from alternative convictions held in good faith. Readers will learn that tolerance, while a start, does not suffice; rather, that shared basic beliefs should give rise to mutual appreciation, leading to genuine friendship. Fritz Wenisch received his Ph.D. in philosophy in 1968 from the University of Salzburg in Austria. He has been a member of the philosophy department at the University of Rhode Island since 1971 and has also taught at the University of Dallas and at the Franciscan University of Steubenville in Ohio. Dr. Wenisch s teaching focuses primarily on philosophy and religious studies. He has published two books, one book-length monograph, and numerous articles, as well as being a regular newspaper contributor, having written over twenty articles for the "Rhode Island Catholic" and more than a hundred for the religion page of the "Providence Journal."

For Jews, Christians and Muslims, as for all human beings, military conflicts and war remain part of the reality of the world. The authoritative writings of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, namely the Hebrew Bible, the New Testament and the Koran, as well as the theological and philosophical traditions based on them, bear witness to this fact. Showing the influence of different historical political situations, various views – sometimes quite similar, sometimes more divergent -- have developed in the three religions to justify the waging of war under certain circumstances. Such views have also been integrated in different ways into legal systems while, in certain cases, theologies have provide legitimation for military expansion and atrocities. The aim of the volume The Concept of Just War in Judaism, Christianity and Islam is to explore the respective understanding of “just war” in each one of these three religions and to make their commonalities and differences discursively visible. In addition, it highlights and explains the significance of the topic to the present time. Can the concepts developed in the Jewish, Christian and Islamic traditions in order to justify war, serve as a foundation for contemporary peace ethics? Or do religious arguments always add fuel to the fire in armed conflict? The contributions in this volume will help provide answers to these and other socially and politically relevant questions.