Description
For more than 13 centuries, Orthodox Christians and Muslims have lived among one another and shared the same societies and cultures. Orthodox Christian relationships with Muslims have been one of the most enduring and impactful factors in Orthodox church history, yet the profound complexities of these relationships have often been forgotten across the centuries or obscured by the context of modern politics. The Orthodox Christian-Muslim Relations course will introduce students to the history of Orthodox Christian-Muslim relations by utilizing historical, theological, and anthropological approaches to this topic. Areas of particular focus will include a comparative analysis of the experiences of Orthodox living under Muslim rule (as in the ‘Abbasid and Ottoman Empires) and Muslims living under Orthodox rule (as in the Russian Empire), the transformative effects of modern nationalism, and the history of Orthodox theological approaches to Islam.