Nirenberg unpacks five hundred years of Western fantasies about Islam, ranging from barbarous invaders to utopian tolerance, a phenomenon he labels the 'inseparability of exclusion and inclusion.' . . . The essays in this book are learned, provocative, and consistently thought-provoking.
Alex J. Novikoff Marginalia This collection of essays confirms Nirenberg's place as a particularly incisive ... Read moreand trustworthy historian of religion.
Commonweal There is much food for thought in these engaging and erudite essays regarding the interdependence between members of these three communities in medieval times. The study is well suited not only for students and scholars of religious studies and intergroup relations but also for those working on the nature of historical thinking and the history of medieval Europe.
Religious Studies Review Nirenberg succeeds in cultivating a sensibility that allows us to discover in the past a stimulus to critical awareness about the workings of our own assumptions about the relations among Judaism, Christianity, and Islam and habits of thought. Among those habits is the conviction that our religious traditions are independent of one another, that they are stable, and that one contains truth and tolerance while the others do not. Conversely, this book proposes the interdependence of these religions, a process in which they are constantly transforming themselves by thinking about one another in a fundamentally ambivalent form of neighborliness.
Mercedes Garc a-Arenal Rodr guez, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cient ficas, Madrid The book is an important contribution to current issues of grave concern and proves how knowing history improves one's ability to make sense of critical issues of the day.
Speculum [Nirenberg] illustrates quite compellingly how Judaism, Christianity, and Islam continued to influence and shape each other; identifies historical processes of transformation; and reveals that the relationships were never static. . . . His arguments about the shared history of the three monotheistic religions are persuasive. . . . Considering the quality of its scholarship, its elegant execution, and its important concerns, it can only be wished that [Neighboring Faiths] will gain a wide
and new
readership.
Historische Zeitschrift The scope of Neighboring Faiths reaches beyond the Middle Ages and appeals to a broader audience. . . . An important read for anyone from the undergraduate level up who is interested in the history or historiography of identity, religion, and Christian-Muslim-Jewish relations.
Medieval Encounters Neighboring Faiths maneuvers masterfully between readings of the tense and sometimes violent multicultural Iberian past and bold assessments of their lessons for our tense and sometimes violent multicultural present. Nirenberg has an uncanny knack for dwelling on
and in
interstices, and for asking the difficult questions that 'being between' often prompts. This is a keenly intelligent, cautionary collection
one that makes eloquent connections across the centuries.
Peter Cole, author of The Dream of the Poem: Hebrew Poetry from Muslim and Christian Spain, 950-1492 Using medieval Iberia
the 'land of three religions'
as his principal point of departure, Nirenberg highlights the dynamic, often ambivalent and fractious, yet interdependent relationship among Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Whether focused on matters of scripture or sexuality, philosophy or poetry, conversion or conflict, he offers a brilliant and provocative demonstration of medieval conceptions of both race and religion. Neighboring Faiths is scholarship at its very best, successfully challenging current notions about the so-called clash of civilizations and even Benedict XVI on the supposed incompatibility of Christianity and Islam.
Richard L. Kagan, Johns Hopkins University Neighboring Faiths provides a cogent and powerful intervention into one of the most debated topics and thorniest issues in the history of the late medieval West: How did Christians, Muslims, and Jews live with each other and think about one another? The book will be of extraordinary importance not only for specialists in the field but also for general readers and anyone interested in the relations among the three religions and in the enduring discussion on 'the clash of civilizations, ' an argument Nirenberg demolishes in an elegant but forceful manner. There are no books presently in print that even approach Nirenberg's in terms of its themes, thoroughness, or interpretive thrust.
Teofilo F. Ruiz, University of California, Los Angeles It's no surprise that Nirenberg's new book, Neighboring Faiths, isn't a feel-good story about how we can all get along. The identities of Jews, Christians, and Muslims, he argues, are fundamentally enmeshed; how one group thinks about itself cannot be separated from how it thinks about the others. . . . If Nirenberg is right that ideas matter, especially once they have hardened into what he calls 'habits of thought, ' our concern about the future relations between Jews, Christians, and Muslims should make us study the ideas they had about themselves and one another in the past.
Carlos Fraenkel London Review of Books Show Less