Muslims and Christians Worshiping Together?

I am always on the lookout for texts to help my students appreciate the messiness of the encounters between Muslims and Eastern Christians. Sometimes, of course, these encounters have been horrifically bloody and entailed enormous suffering for some Eastern Christians. At other times, however, the two traditions have been able to live alongside one another in relative peace for periods of varying length and for various reasons, even interacting liturgically and spiritually at each other's festivals and shrines. A recent book helps us appreciate some of these latter examples: Margaret Cormack, Muslims and Others in Sacred Space (Oxford University Press, 2012), 256pp.

About this book we are told:

This collection of seven essays offers wide-ranging and in-depth studies of locations sacred to Muslims, of the histories of these sites (real or imagined), and of the ways in which Muslims and members of other religions have interacted peaceably in sacred times and spaces. 

The volume begins with a discussion by David Damrel of the official, hostile, Muslim attitude toward practices at shrines in South Asia. Lance Laird then presents a case study of a shrine holy to Palestinian Christians, who identify its patron as St. George, as well as to Palestinian Muslims, who believe that its patron is al Khadr. Ethel Sara Wolper illustrates how al Khadr's patronage was used also to show Muslim connections to Christian sites in Anatolia, and JoAnn Gross's essay explores oral and written traditions linking shrines in Tajikistan to traditional Muslim locations and figures. A chapter by the late Thomas Sizgorich examines how Christian and Muslim authors used monastic settings to reimagine the relationship between the two religions, and Alexandra Cuffel offers a study of attitudes towards the mixing of religious groups in religious festivals in eleventh- to sixteenth-century Egypt. Finally, Eric Ross shows how the Layenne Sufi order incorporates a singular combination of Christian and Muslim figures and festivals in its history and practices. 

Muslims and Others in Sacred Space will be an invaluable resource to anyone interested in the complex meanings of sacred sites in Muslim history.