This page contains links about interreligious issues. Some links are to history websites, other links are to the websites organizations sponsoring interfaith dialogue.
Interfaith Organizations
The Council for a Parliament of the World’s Religions is an East-West interfaith discussion forum dating back to the Nineteenth century. This website describes the CPWR and its conferences, but does not offer articles or essays for the researcher.
The World Council of Churches is the most important Christian ecumenical movement. Founded in the 1930s, the WCC has 340 member denominations and a presence around the world.
The International Council of Christians and Jews is an umbrella organization of 38 Jewish-Christian interfaith groups, world wide. The ICCJ was founded in the aftermath of the Holocaust and is headquarted in Martin Buber’s former house in Germany. The ICCJ website offers bulletins and conference proceedings.
The International Service of Jewish-Christian Documentation (SIDIC = Service International de Documentation Jud�o-Chr�tienne) works under the mandate of Nostra Aetate and is funded by the Catholic Church. The SIDIC website offers scores of primary source and secondary source texts, of which SIDIC is constantly adding more. The texts come from Jewish and Christian sources.
The Institute of Jewish & Christian Studies seeks to understand how religion both fuels conflict and supports our noblest endeavors. The IJCS has links to religious and interfaith websites, its own newsletter, and some important interfaith documents like �Dabru Emit, A Jewish Statement on Christians and Christianity.�
The Interfaith Encounter Association is one of the oldest interfaith groups in Israel. It sponsors a variety of trust building projects between religious communities in the Jewish State. The website contains descriptions of the activities sponsored by the IEA and reports from them.
WeltEthos is an interfaith organization headed by liberal Catholic theologian Hans Kung. WeltEthos � �World Ethic� strives to find common ground between members of different faiths. The WeltEthic website offers the charter of the WeltEthos organization and some German-language resources.
The Daniel Pearl Foundation works at cross-cultural understanding through �journalism, music, and innovative communications.� The website offers links to recent articles about interfaith issues as well as its own Daniel Pearl Foundation events.
The Pluralism Project is a Harvard University research effort into non-Christian, non-Jewish religious life in the United States. The website offers multimedia projects, articles, essays, religious statistics by state, and a frequently updated news feed. The Pluralism Project sponsors several sub-projects as well, including an Interfaith Initiative, a Women’s Initiative, the Civic Initiative, and the International Initiative.
The Royal Institute for Interfaith Studies is based in Amman, Jordan. The RIIF studies Christian-Islamic, and sometimes Jewish-Islamic, interaction, principally in the Middle East. The RIIF publishes an English-language journal, the Bulletin of the Royal Institute for Interfaith Studies.
The Interfaith Network for the United Kingdom aims to inspire �mutual respect, openness, and trust� between people of different faiths in the UK. The Interfaith Network has a variety of free publications available on its webpage. It also has surveys and articles discussing concepts like �Britishness� in a diverse society.
Dovetail is another organization for interfaith couples. Its website offers advice on celebrating holidays, ideas on raising children, journal articles, and conference announcements.
Interfaith Family is a companion website for a magazine for intermarried Jewish-Christian couples. This website offers advice, articles, discussion boards, blogs, surveys, and advocacy alerts.
Christian-Muslim Relations offers dozens of articles, reviews, and essays on evolving Christian-Muslim relations.
The Center for Jewish-Muslim Relations is a Massachusetts-based organization dedicated to establishing bridges between Americans Muslims and Jews. The organization publishes a newsletter and has a short listing of articles on its website.
From Swastika to Jim Crow is a companon site to a PBS documentary on Black-Jewish relations, one of the more tense and simultaneously close racial relationships in the United States. Sharing the experience of discrimination and persecution, yet jostling for the same opportunities in the United States, the black-Jewish relationship has at times been mutually helpful and hostile. The website offers an interpretive essay, many links, timelines, a discussion page, and a bibliography.
ReligiousTolerance.org is a Canadian website featuring many informative, well-researched essays and articles on religious topics. The authors use Scripture to reinforce their claims. In its profile for each major religion, ReligiousTolerance discusses questions like when Islam permits the killing of innocents to Christian Zionism to and Jewish beliefs about homosexuality.
Engaging America, supported by the American Jewish Committee, is a resource for interfaith relationships from the Jewish perspective. Engaging America offers a current events section, an information section about various religions, and interracial relations. Interfaith history
The Abraham Path Initiative is a project to create a trail of exploration following in the footsteps of the Patriarch Abraham. The path will begin in Harran, Turkey, where Abraham first heard God’s call, continue through Syria and Jordan, and then end at Jerusalem. In times of peace, the trail could be extended to Mecca, Saudi Arabia, where Muslims believe Abraham attempted to sacrifice Ishmael and to Ur in Iraq, where Abraham was born. The Initiative is under the auspices of Harvard’s Global Negotiation Project. The website offers a description of the sites the trail will run through, analysis of political conflicts that block the trail’s development, and articles about Abraham.
The Jerusalem Mosaic is devoted to the history of Jerusalem. The website has chronologically organized features about each period of the city’s history. Each feature has hyperlinks to articles about important personalities in Jerusalem’s history, for instance, St. Helena and Sultan Baybars. INTERFAITH COLLEGE DEPARTMENTS
The Nazareth College Center for Interfaith Studies and Dialogue �promotes peaceful living in a religiously diverse society.� The website offers several links to other websites and relevant articles.
Jewish-Christian Relationsis Canada-based group fostering good relations between Jews and Christians. The organization is led by clergymen and academics. The Jewish-Christian Relations website offers articles, reviews, and statements on various interfaith issues.
The Boston College Center for Christian-Jewish Learning is devoted to fostering respect and appreciation between Christians and Jews. The Center for Christian-Jewish Learning has an archive of its own conferences, lectures by BC faculty members, and various current events.
The University of St. Thomas’ program in Catholic-Orthodox dialogue is the only program of its kind in the United States. This website hosts some important primary sources, such as the call in 1920 from the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople that ultimately led to the creation of the World Council of Churches.
General Religion
Encyclopedia of the Orient. The Encyclopedia of the Orient is a web-based encyclopedia written by a Norwegian researcher. The encyclopedia has thousands of articles of good authority.
The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy offers articles, research papers, and essays on a variety of topics in philosophy, including theology. The SEP is a work in progress, and is thus not truly comprehensive, yet its existing articles are highly informative and scholarly. All of the articles are written by experts in respective fields.
Sightings is a biweekly e-zine on religion by Martin Marty, a highly-esteemed professor of religion at the University of Chicago. Topics include �subway tract wars, the fall of bishops, the future of Christianity and secularization theory, the debate over the James ossuary, Jews in America, Kwanzaa, and more.�
The Encyclopedia Britannica is the most prestigious encyclopedia in the English language. Though most Britannica content is subscription only, Britannica offers a free blog on its website. The multi-contributor blog frequently has posts on the topic of religion and interreligious interaction. The blog is neatly categorized, enabling a user to see entries on his or her topic of choice.
ReligionFacts.com is a comprehensive, inclusive website giving introductory information on all the world’s religions. The website gives information on the origins of the various religions, important beliefs, history and major holidays.
The BBC’s Religion & Ethics page contains historical essays and articles on the whole human religious ethical tradition, from Shinto to atheism. There are parallel features on ethics. Within the sections on each religion there are articles on contemporary and historical issues. Some of the articles concern interreligious issues, for instance, the depiction of Moses in Islam. This website is multimedia, there are videos and audio recordings to be enjoyed.
“On Faith” is a Newsweek-Washington Post collaboration on religion. There are articles by journalists, clergymen, and academics, as well as active discussion boards for regular readers.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Timeline of Art History has material on an exceptionally broad spectrum of art history, including Jewish, Christian, and Islamic art. The website includes articles, papers, well-done timelines and beautiful images. Not all of the content relates to art, much of the historical content relates to other aspects of history, including religious evolution.
The Georgetown University �Labyrinth� is a resource for Medieval studies. Not all of its content relates to religion, but much of it does. The Georgetown Labyrinth includes materials for different levels of researcher, from casual researcher to scholars.
Amnesty International is one of the world’s leading human rights organizations. Religious freedom is one of Amnesty’s causes. The Amnesty International website describes conditions of religious freedom and persecution around the world.
The Internet Sacred Text Archive is a collection of full-text searchable scriptures and commentaries on Scriptures. Not only are the two testaments of the Bible included, as well as the Quran and texts from non-monotheistic World religions, but vital treatises on the religions. For example, the full-text of Maimonides’ Guide For the Perplexed is here and an incomplete translation of the Talmud.
Beliefnet is a �supersite� for people interested in religion. Beliefnet hosts forums for followers of all faiths, and for those who proclaim no faith. Beliefnet is a free for-profit enterprise supported by advertising.
The Pew Global Attitudes Project is one of the most highly regarded international survey groups. In this survey, Pew confirms a variety of divides on the war on terror between people of different countries.
Religious Syncretism
ChristianSeder.com, based in Israel, promotes the hosting of Passover seders by Christians. This website offers haggadahs for Christians wishing to have a ceremonial meal like Jesus’ Last Supper. CRI/Voice is another Christian seder site.
Jewish Sites
The Cairo Geniza Papers.The Jews of the Ben Ezra synagogue in Cairo believed that any document written in Hebrew characters had to be preserved. Beginning in the 880s, they thus saved thousands and thousands of pieces of paper in a special room, a geniza, in their synagogue. The papers were preserved in the dry Egyptian air until the 19th century, when Jewish researchers began to read them to learn about the Medieval world. The papers are today primarily at Cambridge University. This website is the official gateway to them.
Askmoses.com, sponsored by the Chabad/Lubavich Hassidic group, is a website hosting hundreds of questions and answers about Judaism. In case your question is not answered, there is an option to email in questions to experts on the subject.
MyJewishLearning.com is a comprehensive site about nearly every facet of Judaism, from history to philosophy to holidays. The website offers a variety of ideas for people who wish to practice Judaism and who wish to simply learn about it.
Synagogues Without Jews is a companion website for a book documenting the former synagogues of Europe. The website has hundreds of photographs. Through this website one can examine synagogue architecture and discover its links to the vernacular architecture of the greater Christian environment.
Fordham University’s Jewish History sourcebook offers a comprehensive guide to the history of Judaism. The sourcebook offers primary source texts written by Jews and in relation to Jews, from the Declaration of the Rights of Man to the Pact of Umar.
Early Jewish writings, contains the entire Tanakh, the Talmud, some Apocrypha.
The Dead Sea Scrolls include the oldest extant texts of the Bible, plus a number of scriptures which were unique to the sect that wrote the scrolls. Qumrum and Modern Scholarship, a companion site to a Library of Congress exhibit Scrolls From the Dead Sea: The Ancient Library of Qumran and Modern Scholarship.
Babylonian Jewry Heritage Center. Jews lived in the land of Mesopotamia (modern Iraq, referred to as Babylon by the Jews who lived there) for almost three thousand years. The Jewish community in Mesopotamia compiled the Talmud and established the tradition of scholarship as the highest religious vocation within Judaism. This website, from Israel, is an excellent resource on Mesopotamian Jewry.
Beth Hatefutsoth is the Museum of the Diaspora, located on the campus of Tel Aviv University. The Museum of the Diaspora documents of the lives of Jews living outside Israel, in the past and the present. The website features a number of well done virtual exhibitions on various Jewish communities. There are articles, essays, Flash animations, music, and scores of photographs.
The Center for Jewish History is a single museum in New York City comprising the formerly independent museums of the Leo Baeck Institute, the Yeshiva University Museum, the American Sephardi Federation, the American Jewish Historical Society, and the YIVO Center for Jewish Research. The CJH website has original online exhibitions and web features of highlights from its museum exhibitions.
JewishHistory.com is an online museum dedicated to Jewish history. The extremely well-designed website offers illustrated features like �The Bible Through Rembrandt’s Eyes,� sections on the days of the Bible, and all periods of Jewish history.
The Living Torah Museum is another online museum, this one dedicated to helping students of the Torah and rabbinical Jewish writings better understand the time at which the texts were written. The time periods covered begin with Biblical times and go into the modern Eastern European period. The site’s newest section offers photographs and short biographies of great Torah personalities.
The Scribe: The Journal of Babylonian Jewry is the official magazine of the Exilarch’s Foundation, a group of Iraqi Jews. It surveys thousands of years Jewish history in Mesopotamia and elsewhere.
Latvians and Jews between Germany and Russia is the personal website of journalist and author Frank Gordon. In this website, Gordon traces the history of Christian Latvian and Jewish Latvian interaction. The history explained is of more toleration than was typical of Eastern Europe.
The Historical Society of Jews from Egypt documents the saga of Egyptian Jewry.
FASSAC, founded in 1967, the Foundation for the Advancement of Sephardic Studies and Culture, is a major repository of Sephardic materials on the web. The FASSAC website has book recommendations, articles, and information on news and media events. The section, �Exploring Our Heritage,� has dozens of full-text articles available.
Khazaria.com is dedicated to the Khazar kingdom, a tribal confederation of Turkic origins whose nobility converted to Judaism. The empire was very tolerant religiously. Khazaria.com is sponsored by the American Center for Khazar Studies, the manager of the website is the author of the Jews of Khazaria. Kharzaria.com offers up to date articles, essays, and links on Khazar history and archeology. There is also the option to subscribe to a listserv.
�Faith Strengthened� (Hizzuk Emunah) is considered the most significant Jewish anti-missionary work. The author of �Faith Strengthened,� a Karaite Jew Isaac Ben Abraham of Troki, lays out a careful argument against the divinity of Jesus and against Jewish guilt for Jesus’ crucifixion. Over the centuries Jews have appreciated this work, as well as thinkers of the Enlightenment, such as Voltaire. The importance of this work is such that Christian theologians have written several refutations of it over the years. This website offers a full-text of the document.
Haskala.net is about the �Jewish Enlightenment,� the philosophy of modernization and secularization adopted by some German Jews in the Eighteenth century. During the Haskala, many Jews shed their cultural distinctiveness in favor of the ways of the middle-class Christian majority. Many children and grandchildren of Haskala Jews, including nearly all the grandchildren of Moses Mendelssohn, eventually became Christians themselves. This website is partly in German, partly in English.
�Napoleon and the Jews� is a comprehensive webpage on Napoleon’s relationship with the Jews of Europe. This webpage is produced by the International Napoleon Society, it offers a great deal of information, but skips over unattractive aspects of Napoleon’s career.
Judeo-Arabic SiteJews in Arab countries spoke various dialects of Arabic. Written Jewish Arabic was usually more colloquial than written Muslim Arabic since Jews did not have Koranic models to emulate. Many great texts of Jewish tradition, including Maimonides’ Guide for the Perplexed, were written in Arabic. This website consists of translation and Hebrew alphabet Arabic originals. The website has two sections consisting of Judeo-Arabic texts, a general section for non-scholars and a specialist section for scholars.
Jewish Theological Seminary Library Treasures. One of the largest collections of Jewish art in the world is at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York City. The JTS offers a small, yet substantial, portion of its collection for viewing at this website. Through this website, a user can browse Medieval illuminated Haggadahs, siddurs, and various three-dimensional art.
Jews from Arab Countries is the website of an Israeli professor of Egyptian descent. This website offers a variety of links to other websites about Jews from Arab countries. The website holds the opinion that the cosmopolitanism of early 20th century Egypt offers a model for future interfaith harmony.
The Society for Crypto-Judaic Studies is an organization devoted to networking for people interested in studying the Marranism, also known as Anusimism or Cryto-Judaism. This website contains memoirs of Hispanic Catholics who rediscovered their Jewish roots and scholarly articles from the SCJS’s magazine, HaLapid.
Kulanu is an organization that works with groups around the world that were apparently once Jewish, but who now predominantly follow other religions. Kulanu, whose name means �all of us,� assists groups like the Lemba of South Africa and the Abayudaya of Uganda, usually Christianity or Islam.
ShetlsJews called their villages in Eastern Europe shetls. Shetls were not ghettos in that they were not walled and they were not completely Jewish.This website is from the PBS documentary Shetl, documenting Polish-Jewish history. Several components of the website relation to Christian-Jewish relations, including sections on Righteous Gentiles and Polish Antisemitism.
HaruthThis website is devoted to the history of the Jews of Poland, once the world’s largest Jewish community. The website contains histories of Polish towns with large populations, Holocaust information, and links to other websites about Polish Jewry.
Russian Jewry.This is one of the best histories of the Jews of Russia on the web. The website is produced by a US-Russia friendship organization. The section of the website about Jews in Russia, Beyond the Pale has well-written historical articles, illustrations, and ideas for teachers. The site is professionally done and well organized.
West Semitic Research Project. The WSRP maintains a collection of photographs of ancient texts from the turn of the Common Era. Sometimes the WSR itself has the photographs, other times the WSR gives contact information on how photographs can be acquired. In addition to photographs of texts, the WSR offers photographs of archeological sites.
The Auerbach Central Agency for Jewish Education offers a variety of resources on Israel, primarily for teachers. The resources are geared more towards Jewish education than general public school education about Israel, but much of the information is useful.
Christian Sites
Anno Domini: Christ Through the Centuries, this website, from the Virtual Museums of Canada, focuses on views of Jesus Christ over the past two millennia. The articles tend to be short, but are well written and on very interesting topics. While the website is about Jesus, there are frequent tie ins to Judaism and Islam. Views of Jesus are represented in Eighteen Themes, from Jesus the Jew to Jesus, the Man who Belongs to this World.
Resource Pages for Biblical Studies, focusing on early Christians and their social world, put together by a Norwegian scholar. This page contains a staggering number of links about Philo.
The Christian Classics Ethereal Library, associated with Calvin College, hosts 118 Christian texts. The authors range from the early Church Fathers to Thomas � Kempis to 19th century American evangelicals.
New Testament Mysticism Project Seminar, an assembly of fourteen scholars affiliated with the Society of Biblical Literature, studies Jewish and Christian centuries from the first centuries, AD.
The New Testament Gateway is an award winning website devoted to the scholarly study of the New Testament. Run by a professor at Duke University, the New Testament Gateway offers hundreds of links to resources on the New Testament. Many of the links are to very specific issues, like individual gospels, Judaic culture at the time, and the Historical Jesus.
The Doctors of the Church are the most important theologians in the Christian tradition. Doctors of the Church include St. John of Damascus, St. Thomas Aquinas, and St. Augustine. The tradition of naming eminent theologians as doctors began in the Middle Ages. This website offers encyclopedia-like articles on the doctors.
The Gnostic Scriptures are alternative gospels that were never canonized. Two of the most famous are the Gospel of Judas and the Gospel of Thomas. The Gnosis Archive contains texts of various Gnostic Scriptures, including the Dead Sea Scrolls. The website is well done and won the Britannica Internet Guide Award.
The American Society of Church History is one of America’s oldest institutes for religious research. The ASCH sponsors conferences and publishes a journal, Church History, on Christian history and the Christian present. The website itself only has information about the Society, it does not offer any religious or historical articles. The ASCH’s journal, Church History, is available on JSTOR.
ChristianityToday, written by and for evangelical Christians, There has a variety of resources on its website. It has many sections on modern Christianity and church management, as well as Christian history.
The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops is the consultive committee of the American Catholic Church. The USCCB website offers church statements on a variety of topics, from family issues to public policy questions.
CatholicEducation.org is a website for Catholic educators. The website has articles and book reviews on contemporary issues like homosexuality, feminism, and pedophilia. There are also sections on Catholic history.
EthicsDaily is the official website of the Baptist Center for Ethics. The website offers analysis of world events from a Christian perspective. The Baptist Center for Ethics explicitly describes itself as being proactive � that is, it tries to be for things as much as against.
One of Dumbarton Oaks’ several disciplines of study is Byzantine studies. The Byzantines governed a large Jewish population, whom they intermittently persecuted and tolerated. Dumbarton Oaks sponsors conferences at which papers are delivered, these papers are abstracted here. Dumbarton Oaks also has a very large collection of Byzantine art, nearly all of which is devotional.
The Chaldean Church consists of Iraqi Christians who are in communion with the Catholic Church of Rome. Their Christian counterparts in Iraq who maintain their autonomous church are called Assyrians. This webpage is on Chaldean history, arts, demographics, and liturgy.
Assyrian Christians are Eastern Christians of Iraq and Syria, they have their own rite and are not in communion with the Roman Catholic Church.. This website offers a variety of resources on Assyrians, including history, news, and activism.
This website is also devoted to Assyrians. http://www.edessa.com/history/history.htm
�Believe� is an encyclopedia of Christianity. The website has a very primitive appearance, but the authors of the articles are scholars and the articles are well written. The Believe encyclopedia has over 7,000 articles as of October 2007.
IconsExplained.com is a non-scholarly, yet comprehensive and informative, website devoted to icons in the Eastern Orthodox Christian tradition. The website is lavishly illustrated and well captioned.
The National Gallery of Art’s Artistic Exchange: Europe and the Islamic World is the official website for an exhibition on Islamic influences on European art, from Giotto to Renoir.
Orientalist Art. In the Nineteenth century many European artists made Islamic scenes their specialty. This art, usually called Orientalist, reveals Nineteenth century attitudes towards the Islamic (and often Jewish) world. Major artists in this vein are Eugene Delacroix, Leon Belly, and Jean-Leon Gerome.
Washington Irving’s Tales of the Alhambra introduced the Alhambra and Islamic Spain to American readers. The text of Irving’s work is available here full-text. The table of contents is interactive and one can jump to a relevant chapter.
Reinhold Niebuhr was the most prominent American theologian from the 1930s to his death in 1971. Niebuhr believed that it was impossible to eliminate evil from the world, but that there was no justification to not try to improve the world. The Reinhold Niebuhr Society website offers links and articles.
The Crusades were a series of wars by European Christian armies to reconquer the Holy Land from Muslims. The Crusader states established began as extremely intolerant, feudal outcasts in an Arab environment, but they gradually became much more religiously open-minded. In its last years, the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem gave Jews and Muslims more rights than any Christian European state did. This website was designed as an online course for Boise State. The website offers discussions, online lectures, illustrations, and reading recommendations. The website focuses on dynastic and military history, not religious or social.
Bible and Archaeology. This website features a number of articles and essays about contemporary issues in Bible interpretation and Biblical archaeology. The website is edited by scholars.
The CenturyOne Foundation is an non-profit organization dedicated to research into the First Century AD and the development of the Jesus Movement. In addition to an online bookstore specializing in First Century Judea, there are numerous articles available on subjects such as crucifixion and the credibility of Flavius Josephus.
Vocabulary for Biblical Students. This website is a glossary of terms used in Biblical scholarship. It is intended for the undergraduate student of the Bible as literature/history. Heretical Movements
The Cathars, also known as Albigensians, were a Christian movement in southwestern France, a region known as the �Languedoc� after the language spoken there. The Cathars believed in a world where good and evil were equally balanced. They considered oath taking, violence, the consumption of meat, and human procreation to be sinful. The Cathars were wiped out in a genocidal Crusade in the early 13th century.
French site about the Cathars. http://jean.duvernoy.free.fr/
The Lollards were a heretical movement in late Medieval England. The Lollards claimed that Scripture was superior to clergy and denied transubstantiation in favor of consubstantiation. The Lollard Society webpage offers links, some history of the Lollards, and a bibliography of Lollard studies.
Bogomilism was a heresy existing in the Medieval Balkans, it influenced the Cathars. The Bogomils also believed in a dualistic world of equally balanced good and evil. The Bogomils apparently considered all corporeal matter to be sinful. Bogomilism survived in Bosnia until the Ottoman conquest. Most Bosnian Muslims are descendents of Bogomils. Although it is on Geocities and not its own URL, this is perhaps the best webstie on the Bogomils available on the web. This website offers some primary source sermons of Bogomil preachers, reviews of books about the Bogomils, and links.
Muslim Sites
Internet Islamic History sourcebook is an invaluable research tool for anyone doing a paper on Islamic history. This website contains articles, sound recordings, and some videos dealing with Islamic history. Perhaps the most valuable portion of the website is its large collection of primary sources. The primary sources are organized very logically through chronology and nation.
Twenty-Five Lectures on Modern Balkan History. The preeminent Muslim state from the 15th to the 20th centuries was the Ottoman Empire. The Ottoman Empire was Islamic, yet it ruled over a large Christian population. This is a series of twenty-five lectures on the Balkans, the area of the Ottoman realm with the largest Christian population. The author of the lectures is a librarian/professor at Michigan State.
Euro-Islam.info. One of the most prominent issues in Muslim-Western relations today is challenge of integrating Muslims into Western European society. This website, http://www.euro-islam.info, concerns Europe’s accommodation to Islam and Islam’s accommodation to Europe. Different countries are profiled individually and there are links to opinion essays at other websites.
Muslims in America, as its name implies, documents the history of Muslims in this country. From Muslim slaves to pioneers in the 1700s and 1800s to the conversion of American Blacks the post-1960s wave of from the Middle East immigration.
The Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s Introduction to Islamic Art and its own collection. The website is well illustrated and has its sections organized by chronology. In addition to purely art history sections, there are sections on political and religious history.
The Routes of Al-Andalus, sponsored by UNESCO, is dedicated to cross-cultural study of Al-Andalus, better known as Islamic Spain. The site focuses on how the different religions of Islamic Spain fertilized each other.
The Stanford Medieval Spain Center has an exceptionally well-done website conveying information on Medieval Spain. The website is organized in a way in which an Iberian city is said to represent a particular century of Medieval Spain, this is called �Interactive Moments.�
The History of the Middle East Database is the product of the history chair at Northfield Mount Hermon School. The website offers news and excellent timelines on Middle Eastern issues, including a timeline of Antisemitism, a timeline of Christian-Muslim relations, and more.
IslamAmerica is a comprehensive website on Islam in the United States. This website offers articles and essays on a wide variety of topics, from Muslims denouncing Holocaust Denial, to promoting Islamic banking, to how churches deal with the growing American Muslim population. Not all articles/essays are written by Muslims.
USC-MSA (University of Southern California Muslim Students Association) Compendium of Muslim Texts is an excellent resource on Islamic history. There are historical sections as well as search engines where one can search the Koran and the Hadith.
Islam and Islamic Studies Resources is run by Alan Godlas, a professor at the University of Georgia. Islam and Islamic Studies Resources had an enormous number of well-organized links to websites and articles about Islam. The links are categorized by topics like �Islam and Terrorism,� �Islamic Arts,� and �Sufis and Sufi Poetry.�
Khamush.com is a British site dedicated to Mowlana Jalaluddin Rumi. Rumi, born to the nobility in modern-day Afghanistan, later settled in Konya in modern-day Turkey. Rumi became a Persian-language poet. His poetry was inclusive, inviting Jews and Christians to join him in religious ecstasy. The Mevlevi order of dervishes (�The Whirling Dervishes�) are inspired by Rumi.
Mevlana.net is managed by descendents of Rumi himself. The site focuses on the Mevlevi dervish order and their sema (�whirling�) ritual.
The University of Michigan’s Center for Middle Eastern and North African Research is a comprehensive guide to the Islamic World. One of the areas where the CMENA website is at its best is in its resources for teachers. CMENA has lesson plans, online activities, and research tools for students.
Islamic Philosophy Online is a resource for anyone studying Islamic science, philosophy, and theology. The website functions with a listing of important philosophers and a searchable encyclopedia. Content includes articles, essays, and the Arabic-texts themselves. The website is produced by the same people who produce the Journal of Islamic Philosophy.
Abu Hamid al-Ghazali was a Muslim mystic and theologian. His most important work, The Incoherence of the Philosophers, is a criticism of the metaphysics of Plato and Aristotle. This website contains articles about al-Ghazali, plus full texts of his works.
MuslimHeritage.com is a scholarly and well-designed website on a wide variety of topics related to Islamic civilization. There are headings on Islamic education, astronomy, coins, historiography, and more. The website is lavishly illustrated. In addition to articles and essays, there are discussion pages and an interactive timeline. This website is supported by Prince Charles.
Islam: 622 AD – Present offers a comprehensive history of Islam, written by Kelley L. Ross, Ph.D.. The website has an enormous wealth of information on Islamic dynasties. There are dynastic timelines, dynastic family trees, and maps. There are short sections describing the histories of timelines, with a focus on interfaith issues.
The Islamic World to 1600 Tutorial offers articles on a wide array of topics in Islamic history. The articles are arranged like a textbook of Islamic history, with hyperlinks to articles for more in-depth treatment. The website offers text and scores of illustrations.
Historical Cairo is dedicated to the history of the important and fascinating city of Cairo. The website has historical articles and maps on Cairo’s ever changing history and religious make up.
The Islam Project aims to introduce Americans to the diversity of Muslim life. The website offers copious materials for teachers including maps, essays, videos, and lesson plans.
Saudi Aramco World. Saudi Aramco World is the corporate magazine of Saudi Aramco, the state-owned Saudi oil company. Despite its being the in-house publication of a corporation, Saudi Aramco World has dozens of fascinating articles on the Middle Eastern history and geography.
The Iran Chamber Society website is produced by Iranologists from around the world. It does not have a governmental or political affiliation. The website has articles on Iranian religion, history, and geography.
The Bektashi Sufi order is a Muslim group that blends some Christian, Sunni, and Shia beliefs. The Bektashis differ from nearly all other Muslims in that they hold that Jesus was more than a prophet, yet less than a messiah.
The Ahmadis are a sect of dissident Muslims mostly living in Pakistan. Ahmadis differ from mainstream Muslims in several ways, Ahmadis see Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, a 19th century mystic, as the final prophet, not Muhammad;l Ahmadis oppose jihad in practice and in theory; and finally, that Jesus did not die on the cross. Ahmadis believe that Jesus survived and went to India after the attempted crucifixion to search for the Lost Tribes of Israel. This website offers articles about current conditions in Pakistan for Ahmadis and many features on the Ahmadi belief that Jesus went to India and was buried in Kashmir.
This website has information on Sarmad the Sufi. Sarmad was born to a rabbinical family in India. Different sources differ on his religious path, but he spent time as a Sufi, a Hindu, a Buddhist, and possibly even an atheist. Suspected of heresy, the Islamic judges of Aurangzeb asked Sarmad to declare the Muslim �there is no G-d by G-d,� but Sarmad just said �there is no G-d.� Despite being a unbeliever, Sarmad was buried in the Jama Masjid, India’s largest mosque. This website has some biographical information on Sarmad.
Alhadith: Resources for the Study of Morisco Language and Literature is devoted to the study of Morisco culture and history. The Moriscos were Muslims in Spain who were forced to convert to Christianity in the early Sixteenth century, analogous to the Marranos, who were forced to convert from Judaism. This website, edited by a University of Colorado professor, contains articles about the Moriscos, digitized post-copyright books, a bibliography, and Morisco manuscripts.
Based in Syria, the Tharwa Project is an online effort to advocate for human rights for Middle Eastern minorities. This webpage offers scores of articles about the Project’s own activism and about the issues that Tharwa works on.
The Liberal Islam Network is an Indonesian Muslim group that advocates for a more inclusive, more flexible Islam that does not take the Koran literally. The Liberal Islam Network website has articles, analysis, interviews, and book reviews. Although the LIN is Indonesian, the entire Islamic world is address.
Circassian World. The Circassians are a people who originally inhabited the Northern Caucasus mountains. Their religion was Sunni Islam, their language Altaic, and their economic system was nomadism. During the middle 19th century the Circassians were expelled from their homeland by the Russian empire. Many Circassians died, but a few survivors settled in the Ottoman realm. This website offers articles and publications on the Circassian people.
The Prince Alwaleed Bin-Talaal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding (ACMCU) is based at Georgetown University. It works to attempt to explain Islam and Muslim opinions to Americans and other Westerners. The ACMCU website offers articles and analysis by Georgetown scholars.
Founded in 1911, The Muslim World, is one of the oldest American scholarly journals on Islam. Published by Blackwell, a large number of articles are available full-text online. In recent years, more of the articles have related to Muslim relationships with other religions.
Answering Islam. This website about Islam is produced by a Christian organization, yet its articles are relatively balanced and very well referenced. This website deals with certain topics that most Islamic websites avoid.
The World Muslim Congress � American Branch is an ecumenical Muslim group. This website is modest in terms of graphics, but it has a number of interesting opinion essays and articles.
The Center for Islamic Pluralism is a group dedicated to combating Islamic extremism. The center works to inform Americans of the challenge of Islamic extremism and to refute the arguments of the extremists. As a website with a political opponent, the CIP website is political itself.
The Minaret of Freedom Institute is an American organization striving for a more liberal and tolerant Islam. The Minaret of Freedom sponsors conferences and puts out position papers on various topics in Islamic-secular relations. The Minaret of Freedom website offers links, up to date articles, and summaries of conferences.
Middle East Conflict
BitterLemons.org is an Israeli-Palestinian dialogue site. Issues usually come out weekly, featuring four or five essays by Israelis/Jews and Palestinians/other Arabs on the same subject.
BitterLemons International covers Israel’s relationships with Arab states, other than the Palestinians and internal conflicts within other Arab states.
MidEastWeb is an Israel-based peace group. Its goal is Jewish-Arab coexistence and it attempts to accomplish this through building �common realities,� and �popularizing human values.� The MidEastWeb website offers articles on historic and contemporary subjects. The views represented are those of the authors. There are fairness standards, but it is possible that some readers will find some articles biased.
Mideast: Land of Conflict. This is a special CNN website on the Mid East conflict. The website offers a timeline, links to other resources, maps, photo galleries, and articles.
The Mideast: A Century of Conflict This is a seven part NPR series on the history of the Mid East conflict, from Theodor Herzl to Ariel Sharon.