SOAS Research Online

Abstract

When Gerald Cipriani invited me to be the guest editor of this special issue on “Dialogue and Religion,” my first thought was to make a safe bet and involve some of the many scholars who engage in interreligious dialogue. I took, however, the risky decision to pursue another line of inquiry by inviting colleagues from within my own department of the Study of Religions at SOAS to submit papers close to their own areas of expertise. This effort has now materialized in this special issue of Culture and Dialogue. The collection serves the double purpose of showing a joint reflection within one given department – hence highlighting dialogue among colleagues – who in turn concentrate on one specific kind of dialogue which is often overlooked: the internal dialogue happening within a given tradition, or within the study of religions in general, as opposed to the more publicised interreligious dialogue. The sequence of essays follows the simple rationale of offering reflections on issues of dialogue within individual traditions and then gradually moves, with the last three essays, to more general concerns for dialogue within the study of religions.