About the Book
Over the last thirty years, governments across the globe have formalized new relationships with religious communities through their domestic and foreign policies and have variously sought to manage, support, marginalize, and coopt religious forces through them. Many scholars view these policies as evidence of the "return of religion" to global politics although there is little consensus about the exact meaning, shape, or future of this political turn.
In The Global Politics of Interreligious Dialogue, Michael D. Driessen examines the growth of state-sponsored interreligious dialogue initiatives in the Middle East and their use as a policy
instrument for engaging with religious communities and ideas. Using a novel theoretical framework and drawing on five years of ethnographic fieldwork, Driessen explores both the history of interreligious dialogue and the evolution of theological approaches to religious pluralism in the traditions of Roman Catholicism and Sunni Islam. He analyzes state-centric accounts of interreligious dialogue and conceptualizes new ideas and practices of citizenship, religious pluralism, and social solidarity
that characterize dialogue initiatives in the region.
To make his case, Driessen presents four studies of dialogue in the Middle East--the Focolare Community in Algeria, the
Adyan Foundation in Lebanon, KAICIID of Saudi Arabia, and DICID of Qatar--and highlights key interreligious dialogue declarations produced in the broader Middle East over the last two decades. Compelling and nuanced, The Global Politics of Interreligious Dialogue illustrates how religion operates in contemporary global politics, offering important lessons about the development of alternative models of democracy, citizenship, and modernity.
Table of Contents:
Preface Acknowledgements Introduction Part I. Politics 1. Geopolitics and Interreligious Dialogue
2. Political Theory and Interreligious Dialogue Part II: Theologies 3. A Brief History of Interreligious Dialogue
4. Catholicism and Interreligious Dialogue 5. Islam and Interreligious Dialogue Part III: Practices 6. Comparative Contexts
7. The Focolare Community (Algeria)
8. The Adyan Foundation (Lebanon)
9. Interreligious Engagement in the Gulf: DICID (Qatar) and KAICIID (Saudi Arabia) Conclusion
About the Author :
Michael D. Driessen is Associate Professor of Political Science and International Affairs at John Cabot University in Rome, Italy, where he directs the MA program in International Affairs. He is also Director of the Rome Summer Seminars on Religion and Global Politics. He received his doctorate from the University of Notre Dame and has been a post-doctoral fellow at Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service in Qatar as well as a Jean Monnet
Fellow at the European University Institute. He is the author of Religion and Democratization, and his articles have appeared in Comparative Politics, Sociology of Religion, Politics and Religion, and Democratization.
Driessen also serves as an advisor for the Adyan Foundation in Lebanon.
Review :
Michael D. Driessen has written a vital tour d'horizon of religious change sweeping across parts of the Middle East that could signal a new mode of global religiosity rooted in interreligious spirituality and solidarity. Responsive to a post-secular and radically plural social milieu, the growing network of Christian and Muslim councils as well as local religious communities, sects, foundations, and organizations, explored through a series of illuminating case studies, collectively represent a new moment of opportunity to realize the goal of inclusive citizenship grounded in human fraternity. Scholars, religious practitioners, civil society, and government officials owe a debt to Driessen for the painstaking research and participant observation that enabled him to plot this roadmap to a more promising future.
This book sheds light on the ways Muslim majority countries have in the last decades engaged in interreligious dialogue. Michael Driessen offers a fresh perspective beyond the state instrumentalization of religion and pays careful attention to the religious content of these initiatives. A much-needed addition to the existing literature on the topic.
Whether you agree or not with his post-modern and post-Islamist framing of the global politics of interreligious dialogue in the Middle East, you can't help but benefit from engaging with Michael Driessen's master analysis in this book and learn from evidence-based and mostly unseen facts about the surprising influence of the bottom-up dialogue on both theological and political narratives, which may also influence future democratic developments across the region.
Driessen's book is the landmark study that we were waiting for, and for a long time. For those who want to understand Catholicism and the papacy today, it is an indispensable key to interpret Pope Francis' outreach to Islam through trips in the Middle East and the participation in interreligious events organized by Catholic groups and movements. But the book is much more than that: it helps discern a certain romanticism of interreligious dialogue, analyzes the growth of interreligious dialogue initiatives as a critical example of religion operating in global institutions today, and looks at interreligious dialogue in the Middle East in the context of geopolitics and global religious change and the response of religious traditions to liberal modernity.
A well-written, cogently argued, and wisely described analysis of the political meaning of dialogue projects in the Arab region. Using the fields of inquiry of political science and religious studies, informed by the author's knowledge of Catholicism and Sunni Islam, this book analyzes the ideas certain interreligious efforts promote; the political context they have emerged from; the geopolitics that influence their form; the political theologies they imply and construct; the changing religious societies they respond to; and the challenges, risks, and unintended consequences which confront them. A must read for anyone interested in learning about religious discourses and geopolitics in the Arab region—and globally.
With passionate erudition and a sharp post-secular gaze, Michael Driessen navigates the complex recent history of the new dynamics of interreligious dialogue—especially Islamo-Catholic—in the Middle East. It is a crucial prism through which the socio-political challenges and aspirations of the people living in the region resonate and are projected towards the future. A must read for political scientists and policymakers, religious scholars, and activists interested in the Middle East.
This book is a very important resource to understand the dynamics of interreligious dialogue in the MENA region, whether from a geopolitical perspective or from a faith-based perspective. It shows how interfaith dialogue is connected to the reshaping of religiosity, to a renewed sense of citizenship but also to political instrumentalization. It presents the readers with a grid by which they can analyze political and religious positions concerning dialogue, and identify those that actually do serve the values of inclusivity and solidarity.
For roughly 20 years now there has been a growing debate over the global religious resurgence, or religion's 'return from exile' in International Relations. Michael D. Driessen's The Global Politics of Interreligious Dialogue helps to reframe this argument by focusing on a variety of case studies in interreligious dialogue, often not well known, and links them to some of the everyday policy issues confronting everyone in the region on education, citizenship, and development. In this way, the book contributes a religious dimension to the 'practice turn' in International Relations theory, and to understanding new, positive religious forms of institutionalization in International Relations in the twenty-first century.
Driessen's unique research combines geopolitics, sociology, and theological studies to paint a full picture of public religious life in the countries he studies.
