Events

Ingrid Mattson, "Marriage and Friendship with People of the Book in Contemporary Islamic Ethics”

In some passages of the Qur’an, Muslims are permitted to take the “People of the Book” (Ahl al-Kitāb) – primarily Christians and Jews – as spouses, friends, and allies, although other passages contain apparently contradictory rulings. Pre-modern Islamic law offers a variety of reasons why these relationships have some significant restrictions and limitations – such as permitting marriage only between male Muslims with Kitābī women and not visa-versa. In this paper, we will review how contemporary Islamic ethicists have addressed these topics from a variety of methods and approaches such as moral progressivism, humanism, feminist theology, and goal-oriented rulings.

Michael Fulton, "Christian-Muslim Military Alliances and Other Examples of Interfaith Cooperation in the Context of the Crusades”

The crusades are often portrayed as an era of religious intolerance marked by a binary struggle between Latin Christians and Middle Eastern Muslims for control of the Levant. While religious rhetoric was at times used to mobilize large armies to fight enemies of a different faith, this is far from the full story. Most episodes of conflict during this period were instead driven by more pragmatic and worldly interests, leading to frequent clashes among coreligionists. In such a political environment, alliances across religious lines were not only possible but common. Cooperative military actions may appear the starkest contradiction to the popular image of this period, but they were only one aspect of a broader spectrum of peaceful interactions between Christians and Muslims amidst the crusades.

Gyongi Hegedus, "Kalam and falsafa as theories and methods to simultaneously bridge and separate Jewish and Islamic thought”

The paper touches upon the thought of kalām (rational theology) and falsafa (Aristotelian/Neoplatonist philosophy) in medieval Islam and Judaism. These two schools were strongly distinct and often hostile to each other, given the fact that religious orthodoxy both in Islam and in Judaism considered falsafa as an alien, Greek product. However, in some thinkers some rapprochement or even confluence can be witnessed.

Julius-Kei Kato, "The Great Irony: How Roman Imperial Economic Oppression in First Century CE Galilee Helped Spawn the Jesus Movement”

This title/topic combines my interests in historical Jesus studies and decolonial/postcolonial/imperial studies. It examines what effects Roman imperial oppression, particularly, its economic aspects, had in the first century CE Roman province of Judaea (Palestine). In the case of Galilee, part of the said province, aspects of this oppression actually contributed to shaping a first century Galilean teacher-leader, Jesus of Nazareth, and his short-lived teaching and ministry among his fellow peasants. Aspects of Jesus’ ministry as ‘resistance to oppression’ would be highlighted. This phenomenon can be seen as a “great irony” in different ways because the movement that would outlive the said Galilean teacher would become a religion that would itself assume aspects of the empire and, in time, eventually take over as its dominant religious tradition.

Melitta Adamson, "Hippocrates, Galen and the Use of Imitation Food (muzawwarāt) in Medieval Arabic Medicine”

The paper explores the question what motivated Nestorian Christian physicians of the Islamic Golden Age to use their Lenten fare of simulated meat dishes for healing purposes. It also provides an introduction to the dishes, their medical application, a patient-response to such a physician-prescribed muzawwarāt diet and ends with a concrete example of an Abbasid medical text whose translation history illustrates what likely impeded the transmission of this popular Arab healing method to Christian Europe.

Maya Shatzmiller, "The Use and Abuse of the Jewish Geniza Documents in Economic Development theory”

The discovery of the Geniza documents and the early publications by Goitein of the data was a major contribution to the economic history of the medieval Mediterranean. Goitein and his followers also advocated for the assimilation between Jewish and Islamic economic institutions as derived from Jewish and Islamic Law. Recently however, economic historians have used these documents as empirical evidence underlying the hypothesis that what delays economic development of Muslim majority countries today are the Islamic legal and communal institutions. The paper challenges this assumption by demonstrating that Islamic legal institutions functioned as efficient economic institutions regulating trade transactions and conflict resolution, which Jewish Law did not.