The Bible and Qur'an

Join us for a special discussion on the character of Abraham as he appears in the Bible and the Qur’an.

November 19, 2014
7:30 to 9:00 pm
Le Conte Sanctuary
Zaytuna College

Panelists include:
John Kaltner of Rhodes College
Omid Safi of Duke University.
Ali Ataie of Zaytuna College and the GTU

The event is being jointly sponsored by American Baptist Seminary of The West, Zaytuna College, the GTU Center for Islamic Studies, and will be hosted at Zaytuna’s Le Conte Sanctuary (2401 Le Conte Ave, Berkeley, CA 94709). The three panelists have spent their academic careers engaging Muslim-Christian relations.

Omid Safi
Omid Safi is an Iranian-American Professor of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at Duke University, where he is the Director of Duke Islamic Studies Center. Dr. Safi specializes in Islamic mysticism, contemporary Islamic thought and medieval Islamic history. He has served on the board of the Pluralism project at Harvard University and is the co-chair of the steering committee for the Study of Islam at the American Academy of Religion. Before joining Duke University, Dr. Safi was a professor at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill.

Ali Ataie
Ali Ataie has been involved in interfaith activities for over fifteen years. He has been a guest lecturer and guest instructor at several colleges and universities, including Cal Poly State, UC Davis, UC Berkeley, UCLA, Cal State East Bay, and others. He has also engaged in dialogs and debates with a number of Christian scholars on topics ranging from the historicity of the resurrection of Christ (upon whom be peace) and the Prophethood of Muhammad (upon whom be peace and blessings). He studied various Islamic sciences with local San Francisco Bay Area scholars. He is a graduate of the Badr Arabic Language Institute in Hadramawt, Yemen, and studied at the prestigious Dar al-Mustafa, also in Hadramawt, under some of the most eminent scholars in the world. He holds a Master’s Degree in Biblical Studies from the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, with emphasis upon the New Testament (he is the first Muslim seminarian in the 147-year history of the school to earn this degree). He is certified in Arabic, Hebrew, and Biblical Greek, and is fluent in Farsi. Currently he is working on a Ph.D. in Islamic Biblical Hermeneutics at the GTU and is an adjunct professor of Islamic Studies and lecturer on World Religions at the GTU.

John Kaltner
John Kaltner is the Virginia Ballou McGehee Professor of Muslim-Christian Relations at Rhodes College, where he teaches courses in the Bible, Islam, and the Arabic language. Among his publications are the following works: Introducing the Qur’an: For Today’s Reader (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2011); What Do Our Neighbors Believe? Questions and Answers on Judaism, Christianity, and Islam (with Howard Greenstein and Kendra Hotz) (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 2007); “Nature as Muslim: Applying a Qur’anic Concept to the Bible.” Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations (forthcoming); “Jews, Christians, and Muslims: People of the Book” (with Joel S. Kaminsky and Younus Mirza). Pages 100-18 in Anselm Companion to the Bible (Edited by Corrine L. Carvalho, Winona: Anselm Academic, 2014); and “Comparative Study of the Bible and the Qur’an since 9/11.” Journal of Ecumenical Studies 44 (2009), 473-80.