Mission

Humantrustees.org aims to foster understanding and cooperation between Muslims and Christians so as to empower them to live up to their God-given calling as “trustees of the earth.” This Christian initiative seeks to accomplish this goal through scholarship, teaching, news commentary, and networking between scholars, members of both communities, and with anyone else who is passionate about peace and human flourishing.
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23 January 2017

Pope on a Mission: Muslims in the Mix (2)

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The potential future effects of global climate change include more frequent wildfires, longer periods of drought in some regions and an increase in the number, duration and intensity of tropical storms. Credit: Left - Mellimage/Shutterstock.com, center - Montree Hanlue/Shutterstock.com.
In the second half of this blog post I make three points. After an introduction to Christian mission (and Islamic da’wa), I first argue that Pope Francis in his first encyclical is intentionally engaging in Christian mission. In fact, by addressing all humanity on an issue that impacts the whole planet with potentially disastrous consequences, he is leveraging his influence…
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13 December 2016

Pope on a Mission: Climate Change & Creation Care (1)

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Polar bears are losing their habitats across the glacier regions, and many are drowning as a result of the excessive floodwaters.
Like many others, I’ve been reeling under the shock of a Trump presidency and its potential impact on a host of issues, and the Paris Agreement in particular – in essence “the first international climate agreement” (see some of the dire consequence should the Trump administration choose to walk away from it in this Atlantic article). World peace is intimately…
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06 June 2016

The Impossible Islamic State? (3)

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Rachid Ghannouchi, right, the leader of the Ennahda party in Tunisia, and Abdelfattah Mourou, the vice president, on Friday at the party’s congress. On Monday, Mr. Ghannouchi won re-election with 800 of 1,058 ballots cast. Credit Fethi Belaid/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
We now come full circle in this trilogy on the “impossible Islamic state.” Two months have elapsed since the second installment and only a couple of weeks ago a dramatic event took place that “puts the icing on the cake” in a way that I could never have anticipated. Ghannouchi himself in his opening speech to his party’s (Ennahda) Tenth…
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05 April 2016

The Impossible Islamic State? (2)

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Jocelyne Cesari discusses her new book, "The Awakening of Muslim Democracy: Religion, Modernity, and the State" in the CGIS South on Tuesday (photo by Shunella Grace Lumas). She is Professor of Religion and Politics at the University of Birmingham, UK, Senior research fellow at Georgetown University’s Berkley Center on Religion, Peace and World Affairs. She teaches on contemporary Islam at the Harvard Divinity School and directs the Harvard interfaculty program “Islam in the West” hosted at the Alwaleed Islamic Studies Program.
In the first installment of this blog we looked at Wael Hallaq’s The Impossible State (2013) and in following the assessment of two reviewers, Lama Abu-Odeh and Andrew March, we felt Hallaq helpfully highlighted some of the challenges of pressing traditional Islamic legal norms into the service of a modern nation-state. On the other hand, his rather rigid and dogmatic…
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