Online
Speaker: Youshaa Patel (Associate professor of Religious Studies at Lafayette College)
Responses: Asligül Aysel, Michaela Quast-Neulinger
The making of Jewish, Christian and Muslim identity has always been entangled, a history of imitation, family resemblance, rivalry and marking the distinct difference to the respective “other”. Youshaa Patel’s groundbreaking study “The Muslim Difference” traces the historical roots of the Islamic discourse on making a difference. It is a study of religious boundary-making from the beginning of Islam till late modernity. Patel reveals “not only how Muslims were differentiated from non-Muslims, but also how Muslims themselves were differentiated” (9). The book is a must-read for understanding the contingent making of the fluid boundaries, the big and small differences between Muslims and non-Muslims and the future of interreligious relations in late modernity. The American Academy of Religion named The Muslim Difference a finalist in two categories: Best First Book in the History of Religions, and Award for Excellence in the Study of Religion (Textual Studies).
Youshaa Patel is associate professor of Religious Studies at Lafayette College (Easton, PA USA), and author of The Muslim Difference: Defining the Line between Believers and Unbelievers from Early Islam to the Present (Yale University Press 2022). His scholarship explores how Islam has shaped—and been shaped—by Muslim interfaith encounters in the Middle East and beyond. His work has been supported by grants from Mellon, Fulbright, and the American Institute of Yemeni Studies, and includes extended research stays in India, Qatar, Yemen, Jordan, and Syria. Most recently, Professor Patel was the Abdul Aziz Al-Mutawa visiting fellow at the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies, an independent center of the University of Oxford.
A webinar of the HEST-Cluster Christian-Muslim Relations in preparation for the Study Week Granada July 2024.
Organisation: Michaela Quast-Neulinger / Hest-Cluster „Christian-Muslim Relations”