Roadmap to Reconciliation II: Ruminations on the Need for Integrity in Intellectual Interfaith Engagement

This article builds on the framework for a law school-based academic center for Jewish-Muslim engagement laid out in our previous work, Roadmap to Reconciliation. In this follow-up essay, we outline standards, or ground-rules, for the individuals and institutions engaged in academic interfaith discussions of the kind that would occur in our proposed Center. Chief among these considerations is the need to respect the integrity of each respective faith tradition involved in such conversations. We argue for an interfaith dialogic modeled on the insights of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, and discuss how his reflections on the potentials and risks of interfaith engagement can be helpful in setting standards for our proposed Center for Jewish-Muslim Engagement.

By offering examples of integrity-rooted interfaith approaches to practical issues in the field of Jewish-Muslim engagement, and by providing a fresh look at new frontiers for intellectual collaboration between Jewish and Muslim scholarship, we further extol the virtues and the need for a path-breaking and principled research initiative in this field.