Tuesday,  April 16th, 2024 | 8:30am-10:30am EST / 2.30pm-4:30pm CET

Click here to participate in the webinar. 

Michael Daniel Driessen, joined by Giancarlo Bosetti, Sihem Djebbi, Claudio Fontana and Paolo Maggiolini, will discuss his most recent publication, “The Global Politics of Interreligious Dialogue: Religious Change, Citizenship, and Solidarity in the Middle East” published by Oxford University Press, which 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’s book 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. It presents four studies of dialogue in the Middle East—the Focolare Community in Algeria, the Adyan Foundation in Lebanon, the King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz International Centre for Interreligious and Intercultural Dialogue (KAICIID) of Saudi Arabia, and the Doha International Center for Interfaith Dialogue (DICID) of Qatar—and highlights key interreligious dialogue declarations produced in the broader Middle East over the last two decades. The event is within the framework of the project “Theologies and Practices of Religious Pluralism“.

–> Sihem Djebbi (Université Sorbonne Paris Nord and Pontifical Theological Faculty of Southern Italy)

–> Claudio Fontana (Oasis Foundation and Catholic University of Milan)

–> Paolo Maggiolini (Catholic University of Milan)

Cover photo: Pope Francis embraces the Grand Imam of al-Azhar mosque Sheikh Ahmed Al-Tayeb during their meeting at the Papal residence near the Sakhir Royal Palace, in the eponymous Bahraini city on November 4, 2022. (Photo by Marco Bertorello / AFP)