by Mona Siddiqui (Author)
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.
Format: Hardcover
Pages: 288
Publisher: Yale University Press
Published: 02 Apr 2013
ISBN 10: 0300169701
ISBN 13: 9780300169706
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
* The Economist *[H]er case is shot through with qualifications, testifying to her honesty and intellectual empathy as well as a depth of scholarship to be expected of the Professor of Islamic and Interreligious Studies at Edinburgh. . .She [Siddiqui] deserves recognition as one of the most imaginative leaders of contemporary Islamic thought. -Jonathan Benthall, Times Literary Supplement
-- Jonathan Benthall * Times Literary Supplement *