Abstract
Moderated by Dominic Longo, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Theology / Director, Muslim-Christian Dialogue Center, University of St. Thomas
Sandra Keating, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Theology, Providence College
Sandra Keating is associate professor of theology and director of the Development of Western Civilization Program at Providence College in Providence, Rhode Island. She teaches and publishes in the area of comparative religion with an emphasis on Christian-Muslim relations, particularly focusing on theological exchanges in the early medieval period and the historical background to contemporary issues in interfaith dialogue. She is a member of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops Catholic-Muslim Dialogue Group, and has served as a consultor on the Vatican Commission for Religious Relations with Muslims. Her recent publications include "'Say Not Three': Some Early Christian Responses to Muslim Questions about the Trinity," The Thomist 74:1 (2010); “Interreligious Dialogue with Muslims: Reflections on Yesterday and Today,” International Journal of African Catholicism, 2:2 (2010); "An Early List of the Ṣifāt Allāh in Abū Rā’iṭa al-Takrītī’s First Risāla ‘On the Holy Trinity,’" Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 36 (2009); and Defending the "People of Truth" in the Early Islamic Period: The Christian Apologies of Abu Ra'itah (2006).
Homayra Ziad, Ph.D.
Scholar of Islam, Institute of Islamic, Christian, and Jewish Studies
Homayra Ziad is the first Muslim scholar on the staff of the Institute for Christian and Jewish Studies in Baltimore, Maryland. She was formerly assistant professor of religion at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut. After receiving her first degree from Bryn Mawr, she earned a doctorate in Islamic Studies from Yale University with a focus on Indo-Persianate Islamic traditions and the history of Sufism. She is deeply involved in interreligious education and training, as well as local, national and international interfaith initiatives and educational outreach on Islam. She is co-founder and co-chair of the American Academy of Religion’s Interreligious and Interfaith Studies Group and on the editorial team for the Palgrave series Interreligious Studies in Theory and Practice. Her research tries to avoid easy dichotomies, and deals with individual figures and movements that cross discursive boundaries. She is working on two books. The first looks at the interplay of religion and literary aesthetics in the consolidation of the Urdu/Hindavi literary tradition in North India, through the work of the eighteenth-century Sufi theologian and poet Khwajah Mir Dard. The second is a popular work on Islam and humor. Her scholarly interests include Sufi theory and practice, theologies of pluralism, Qur’anic hermeneutics, and religion and humor. She has published in both academic and popular venues. Her academic work has appeared in the Oxford Journal of Islamic Studies,The Muslim World, The Annual of Urdu Studies, and the Journal of Inter-Religious Dialogue, and she has contributed chapters to several edited volumes.