"Christians, Muslims, and Jesus" by Mona Siddiqui

Christians, Muslims, and Jesus Mona Siddiqui

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Format:: Paperback
Publication date:: 15 Apr 2014
ISBN:: 9780300205275
Imprint:: Yale University Press
Dimensions:: 296 pages: 225 x 144mm
Sales territories:: World

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A groundbreaking examination of the way Muslim thinkers have approached and responded to Jesus through the centuries

Prophet or messiah, the figure of Jesus serves as both the bridge and the barrier between Christianity and Islam. In this accessible and thoughtful book, Muslim scholar and popular commentator Mona Siddiqui takes her reader on a personal, theological journey exploring the centrality of Jesus in Christian-Muslim relations. Christian and Muslim scholars have used Jesus and Christological themes for polemical and dialogical conversations from the earliest days to modern times. The author concludes with her own reflections on the cross and its possible meaning in her Muslim faith.

Through a careful analysis of selected works by major Christian and Muslim theologians during the formative, medieval, and modern periods of both religions, Siddiqui focuses on themes including revelation, prophecy, salvation, redemption, sin, eschatology, law, and love. How did some doctrines become the defining characteristics of one faith and not the other? What is the nature of the theological chasm between Christianity and Islam? With a nuanced and carefully considered analysis of critical doctrines the author provides a refreshingly honest counterpoint to contemporary polemical arguments and makes a compelling contribution to reasoned interfaith conversation.

Mona Siddiqui is professor of Islamic and interreligious studies at the Divinity School, Edinburgh University. She lives in Glasgow.

"An excellent book."—Christianity

“A charitable, knowledgeable, very readable and personally candid survey of Christian-Muslim interactions and disputes."—Matthew Skinner, The Christian Century

“This landmark study of the figure of Christ by a Muslim scholar is both a personal voyage of discovery and a sourcebook . . . This splendid work makes clear that mutual understanding requires empathy and courage to move beyond formulaic positions. Any serious theology today has to be interreligious.”—Dr Philip Lewis, Church Times

"Parts of her book are rigorously academic and arcane, other parts are very personal . . . She does not confine her meditations on her own faith to an introduction. Rather, she ambitiously weaves her personal and scholarly views throughout . . . The most compelling passages are the personal ones, in which the author sets out some of her own dilemmas . . . She writes with clarity and empathy about the core doctrines of Christianity . . . But unlike other comparative-religion scholars, she does not paper over the differences between these two global monotheisms.”—The Economist

“Siddiqui is careful and scholarly throughout, quoting extensively from primary as well as secondary sources, and her sharp scholar’s eye and clear prose style are assets as she explores complicated topics . . . While many of the topics and writers covered here merit an entire book, this concise and intelligent work deserves attention from both academic and popular audiences.”—Publishers Weekly

“[T]his fine and empathetic volume. . .can be read as a dynamic, extended meditation on interfaith, from the standpoint of a scholar admirably honest about her own Islamic faith position. Siddiqui does not try to gloss over the very real differences between the praxis and theologies of Islam and Christianity, in their diverse forms, but deals with them all sympathetically and respectfully. In so doing, she provides not just a valid and rich intertextuality, but a basis for genuinely harmonious interfaith meeting and dialogue.” —Ian Richard Netton, The Tablet