Comparing Christianity & Islam: Debating Religions in the Age of Print

Usually in Akbar’s Chamber we pursue questions of inter-religious understanding. But in this episode, we explore its flip side by way of the religious misunderstandings—and plain disagreements—between Christians and Muslims which were amplified in modern period by the spread of printing through the Middle East. After outlining the context in which Muslim scholars began both debating Christianity and debating with Christian missionaries, we’ll turn to a case study of an especially important figure in the Muslim public sphere: Rashid Rida (1865-1935). By examining his sources of information on Christianity, we’ll see the curious co-dependence of Christian and Muslim scholars who increasingly relied on the same sources of information, and misinformation. Nile Green talks to Prof. Umar Ryad (Professor of Arabic and Islamic Studies at the University of Leuven in Belgium and the Director of the Leuven Centre for the Study of Islam, Culture and Society). He is he the author of Islamic Reformism and Christianity: A Critical Reading of the Works of Muhammad Rashid Rida and his Associates (1898-1935) (Leiden: Brill, 2009), which is available open-access here: https://brill.com/view/title/16450