“Islam and Christianity Discourse” Seminar to Be Held

(Ahlul Bayt News Agency) - Organized by the Islamic Development Office in East Azerbaijan Province, a seminar titled “Islam and Christianity Discourse” is to be held in Tabriz on September 21-23.  Hojat-ol-Islam Hamid Azimi, the office’s managing director, said that the seminar would feature an interfaith discussion between Islam and Christianity with the presence of Mohammad Legenhausen, an American philosopher who teaches at the Imam Khomeini Education and Research Institute in Qom.  “It will be held in three sessions on September 21-23 in Shams Tabrizi Center,” he went on to say, adding that the seminar mainly seeks to “further familiarize students with various aspects and characteristics of Islam and Christianity through a comparative study.”  Born into an American Catholic family in 1953, Professor Gary Carl (Muhammad) Legenhausen holds a Ph.D. in philosophy from Rice University. He got acquainted with Islam through his Iranian student Akbar Nojehdehi in the University of Texas. In 1979, he kept discussing with him about ideological and religious issues and though he was only concerned with doing research on Islam at first, he took a deep interest in it over the course of his research and ended up a Muslim three years later.  He wrote a book entitled Islam and Religious Pluralism in which he advocates "non-reductive religious pluralism". He has been an advocate of interfaith dialogue, and serves on the advisory board of the Society for Religious Studies in Qom.  Professor Legenhausen was officially honored last year by the Islamic Republic of Iran as an outstanding figure serving Islam and the Quran./129