This article briefly examines six centres of learning and witness representing Buddhist, Hindu, Christian, Zoroastrian and Muslim faiths. It explores the implications of five potential insights arising from these historical models for the Asian contexts of today. These insights are approached from the perspective of the Christian world view, but are equally applicable to other faiths. An attempt has been made to do two main things. First is to highlight historically the importance of pre-modern centres of learning and witness that (...) can perhaps also be called universities, or 'proto-universities'. There has also been the desire to encourage the 'Global South' in their history of education, and suggest implications for the future. (shrink)

Three decades after Prophet Muhammed’s death in 632, the Patriarch of the Church of the East, Isho-yahbh III, was aware of the growing influence of the new faith of Islam and how many Christians were converting to it. In his letters, the sense of ambiguity and questions that many had about the nature of this faith was apparent and brought out the passionate struggle the Patriarch was feeling as he saw “so many thousands of men called Christians going into apostasy,” (...) many not as the result of compulsion but for economic reasons. A sense of helplessness of the Christian leader comes through in his letters and perhaps contributes to a sense of an unpredictable future. This article explores some of Isho-yahbh’s letters, interacting with the context of Islam spreading further into the areas of Mesopotamia and Persia, yet with a vibrant and widespread Church of the East also spreading to India and China from its homelands in West Asia. (shrink)

This paper examines a little known aspect of the history of inter-faith relations in Muslim countries; the presence and role of Christian monks and monasteries. Particular attention is given to Muslim attitudes and writings on monasticsm, including in the Qur’an and Hadith, the 9th century in Iraq as an important period of Muslim-Christian interactions, and present and future implications of Christian monasteries in inter-faith relations. By describing these institutions and their place in Islamic society, it is hoped that an alternate (...) story can be told to the usually dominant paradigm of Crusade/jihad based discourse. (shrink)