Welcome...

9th February, 2010:

Nick Chatrath:

Fighting the unbeliever: Anjem Choudary, Musharraf Hussain and pre-modern sources on sura 9:29, abrogation and jihad

Common ground or agreed starting points?

Do Muslims and Christians have a common belief in god? Megabytes of type discuss whether both refer to the same being, and what they believe about him.

Do Muslims and Christians agree that there is one god who created us all? Yes.

Almost every ‘common ground’ turns out to be problematic if we dig down to underlying meanings. Not only ‘god’ but words like law, love, prophethood and salvation have different connotations. Might it be more helpful to think in terms of starting from what our nineteenth century predecessors called ‘truths admitted by both’ than in terms of finding ‘common ground’?

The Director, Martin Whittingham, writes: 'A warm welcome to this first Newsletter from the Centre for Muslim-Christian Studies. Here you will find research being presented at the Centre - work which does not follow a party line, but asks the reader to think. I wish you fruitful reading and browsing.'

What does the Qur’an say about unbelievers? Moreover, what does it say about the relationship between God and unbelievers, and what Muhammad’s attitude to unbelievers should be? These are the questions at the heart of David Marshall’s painstaking study of the Qur’anic data on unbelievers...