OCTOBER 18, 2012
\nby Maggie Johnson ’14, Contributing Writer<\/p>\n
Since the terrorists\u2019 attacks of September 11, 2001 Muslim-Christian relations have been strained; people of the two faiths interact less and understand each other less, says Mahmoud Ayoub, an author who has worked with the U.S. State Department since 1999 on diplomatic programs in the Middle East and South East Asia.<\/p>\n
Speaking to an audience Tuesday at Daniel Chapel, Ayoub said some Muslims have even been the target of<\/p>\n
Mahmoud Ayoub spoke at Fumran Tuesday on “A Muslim view of Christianity”. (Thomas Nantz)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
hostility and suspicion on the part of a population that understands little, if anything, about them.<\/p>\n
Ayoub\u2019s lecture, titled \u201cA Muslim View of Christianity\u201d, was sponsored by several political and religious organizations as a part of Furman\u2019s World Religions Symposium, a series of presentations and discussions dedicated to issues of faith.<\/p>\n
Some Christians, Ayoub said, have a narrow and skewed perspective of a religion practiced by nearly a quarter of the world\u2019s population.\u00a0 This perspective, he said, hinders interaction understanding between Muslims and followers of other faiths.<\/p>\n
Ayoub, a graduate of the American University of Beirut, the University of Pennsylvania, and Harvard, has authored many books on the subject of Islam\u2019s relationship with other religions.<\/p>\n
His talk explored ways to nurture ties between Islam and Christianity through interfaith dialogue and focusing on the similarities between the two religions.<\/p>\n
\u201cThose closest to Muslims are those who call themselves Christians,\u201d says Ayoub. \u201cBesides Muhammad, Christ receives more attention in Islam than any other prophet.\u201d<\/p>\n
For Ayoub, an important step to closing the divide is for both faiths to accept the other\u2019s religious texts as valid contributions to the chronicling of the Abrahamic religious traditions.<\/p>\n
\u201cIslam hopes to achieve an ecumenical community of faith,\u201d says Ayoub, \u201cnot for people to give up their religion but to accept each other as followers of God.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cReligion, in the end, is a personal choice.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
OCTOBER 18, 2012
\nby Maggie Johnson ’14, Contributing Writer<\/p>\n
Since the terrorists\u2019 attacks of September 11, 2001 Muslim-Christian relations have been strained; people of the two faiths interact less and understand each other less, says Mahmoud Ayoub, an author who has worked with the U.S. State Department since 1999 on diplomatic programs in the Middle East and South East Asia.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":265,"featured_media":873,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-872","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-academic-department-page","category-religion"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/872","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/265"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=872"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/872\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/873"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=872"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=872"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=872"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}