Leading world authorities on religion will be coming to Glasgow in October and November to lecture on Islam and its relationship with other religions.

This year the acclaimed Gerald Weisfeld Lectures have been organised by the University of Glasgow's Centre for Inter-Faith Studies and Centre for the Study of Islam. The series of 10 public lectures will look at Islam's understanding of religious diversity and its relationship with Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism and Christianity.

Event organiser Professor Perry Schmidt-Leukel, who holds the Chair of World Religions for Peace at Glasgow University, said: "These lectures are very important for an understanding of the Muslim faith, particularly in relation to other religions. The Weisfeld Lectures are dedicated to fostering peaceful relations between religions. This year they will explore the areas of conflict but also the positive potential for a fruitful dialogue between Islam and the other major religions.

"World renowned Muslim theologians and scholars of religion will meet with their colleagues from other faiths and from religious studies and engage in a vivid dialogue over questions such as, what can Islam give to and what might Islam receive from the other great faiths? And what are the major points of conflict and how can these be resolved?"

The first set of lectures deals with the crucial question: Can Islam accept other religions as genuine religious partners of equal value or is Islam bound to the claim of being uniquely superior to all the others? The second set of lectures looks at the particularly complex relationship between Islam and Judaism. There is no doubt that improved relations between these two communities can make a significant contribution to the peace-efforts in the Near East.

Hinduism and Islam is the topic of the third set of lectures, again a field with massive political ramifications as is evident from, and since, the separation of India and Pakistan. The forth set of lectures is on the often neglected area of Buddhist-Muslim relations. The world became aware of the involved problems through the destruction of the Buddha figures in Afghanistan by the Taliban, but is it also aware of how much Islam and Buddhism might have in common?

The final set of lectures deal with the relations between Christianity and Islam. The highly competent speakers will open up new grounds for the theological dialogue between the two communities.

The lecturers come from India, Israel, Turkey, the USA, Germany, Switzerland and Britain. They include internationally renowned scholars such as Jacques Waardenburg, the Islamic theologian Asghar Ali Engineer, and the Director of the Toda Institute for Global Peace and Policy Research, Majid Tehranian, one of few academics who specialises in the relationship between Islam and Buddhism.

Kate Richardson (K.richardson@admin.gla.ac.uk)

For more information, to attend the lectures or to speak to any of the lecturers please contact the University of Glasgow Media Relations Office on 0141 330 3683 or email K.Richardson@admin.gla.ac.uk

The Lectures:

9 October ? Islam in a World of Diverse Faiths
Speakers: Mahmut Aydin and Jacques Waardenburg
Chair: Dr Lloyd Ridgeon

16 October ? Islam and Judaism
Speakers: Muhammad Kalisch and Alon Goshen-Gottstein
Chair: Dr Alastair Hunter

30 October ? Islam and Hinduism
Asghar Ali Engineer and Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad
Chair: Professor Mona Siddqui

6 November ? Islam and Buddhism
Speakers: Majid Tehranian and Alexander Berzin
Chair: Professor Perry Schmidt-Leukel

13 November ? Islam and Christianity
Speakers: Ataullah Siddqui and Martin Bauschke
Chair: Professor John Riches

All lectures will take place from 5pm-8pm at the Boyd Orr Building, Lecture Theatre A, University of Glasgow. Entry is free and there is no pre-registration.

About the speakers:

Mahmut Aydin is Associate Professor of History of Religions and Interreligious dialogue at Ondokuz Mayis University, Faculty of Theology, Samsun in Turkey. He has published widely on Islam and Religious Pluralism.

Jacques Waardenburg is retired Professor of Religious Studies of the University of Lausanne in Switzerland and a world renowned expert of Islam. Among his numerous publications are Muslim Perceptions of Other Religions (1999) and Muslims and Others (2003).

Muhammad Kalisch is Professor of Islamic Religion and Director of the Centre for Religious Studies at the University of Munster in Germany. He is widely known for his work on a rational interpretation of Islam.

Alon Goshen-Gottstein is Director of the Elijah Interfaith Institute and Director of the Centre for the Study of Rabbinic Thought, Jerusalem in Israel. He has widely published in the field of Inter-Faith relations.

Asghar Ali Engineer is a renowned scholar and Islamic theologian. He is chairman of the Centre for Study of Society and Secularism, Mumbai in India and has published more than 40 books.

Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad is Senior Lecturer at Lancaster University. He is an expert in the field of Indian religions and philosophy as well as in the relations between religion and politics. He has published widely in the field of Indian religion and philosophy.

Majid Tehranian is Director of the Toda Institute for Global Peace and Policy Research and adjunct Professor of International Relations at Soka University of America. Together with Daisaku Ikeda he published Global Civilization. A Buddhist?Islamic Dialogue (2003).

Alexander Berzin holds a PhD in Indian Studies from Harvard. He is a translator and Dharma teacher of the Tibetan Buddhist traditions and has been instrumental in fostering Islamic-Buddhist dialogue. He currently lives in Berlin.

Ataullah Siddiqui is Senior Research Fellow at the Islamic Foundation, Leicester and Director of the Marksfield Institute of Higher Education; Visiting Fellow in the Centre for the History of Religious and Political Pluralism, University of Leicester. In 1997 he published a comprehensive study on Christian-Muslim dialogue in the Twentieth Century.

Martin Bauschke is Director of the Global Ethic office in Berlin and a specialist in Muslim-Christian dialogue. His major field of research is the Muslim image of Jesus and its relevance to contemporary Christian theology. He is the author of several academic works in that field.

About the Gerald Weisfeld Lectures:

The ?Gerald Weisfeld Lectures? were established in 2003. Funded by the Weisfeld Foundation, they are dedicated to inter-faith studies and the fostering of peaceful relations between the world religions. The first series of Weisfeld Lectures looked at ?War and Peace in World Religions? and was followed by a series on ?Buddhism and Christianity in Dialogue?. The Weisfeld Lectures are published as books with SCM-Press, London.

The next series is planned for 2008 and will deal with the relationship between Chinese Religions and the West. The chief organiser of the Weisfeld Lectures is Professor Perry Schmidt-Leukel who holds the Chair of World Religions for Peace and is Director of the Centre for Inter-Faith Studies at the University of Glasgow.

First published: 3 October 2006