My Muslim Neighbor: Resources

My Muslim Neighbor 

Resources 

Discover Islam will provide a free set of 6 DVDs to members of the ELCA. Each half-hour long program presents a positive, insider's view of Islam. Topics include: Islam: An American Faith, Christians & Islam, and Women in Islam. Request a set through www.discoverislam.com/elca. The page also includes a link to the Study Guides available through www.elca.org. There are many other free resources available through the Discover Islam website. 

Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service and Lutheran Social Service of Minnesota have produced a free 7-part study titled My Neighbor is Muslim: Exploring the Muslim Faith. The authors  include prominent Lutheran theologians and Muslim writers. The study can be downloaded as an ebook at http://lirs.org/myneighborismuslim. Or request a hard copy of the book through the same website.

A decent English translation of the Qur'an with some helpful notes can be downloaded at no charge through Amazon's Kindle store. Search for Quran: A Simple English Translation  from Goodword Books. 

The Study Qur'an: A New Translation and Commentary by Seyyed Hossein Nasr, et al (HarperOne, 2015. $59.99) can be had for substantially less than MSRP. It includes extensive notes interpreting the text of the Qur'an and a collection of useful essays. 

Todd Green of Luther College has written and excellent and highly-readable book titled Fear of Islam: An Introduction to Islamophobia in the West (Fortress Press, 2015. $24.00). In it Prof. Green explores the history of Islamophobia, the modern Islamophobia industry, and solutions to the problem of Islamophobia.

Karen Armstrong's book Islam: A Short History (Modern Library, 2002, $15.95) gives a good overview of Islamic history from the Prophet Muhammad to our day.

The theologically adventurous will want to read Allah: A Christian Response, by Miroslav Volf (HarperOne, 2011. $15.99). Volf gives serious and thought-provoking consideration to the question of whether Christians and Muslims worship the same God and what this means for relationships between the two faiths.

There are further resources available through the ELCA website (http://www.elca.org/en/Faith/Ecumenical-and-Inter-Religious-Relations/Inter-Religious-Relations/Online-Resources and A Center of Christian-Muslim Engagement for Peace and Justice at the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago (http://centers.lstc.edu/ccme/)