Last Wednesday, May 20th, a webinar was organized by the Sankt Georgen Theological Faculty of Frankfurt, the University of Innsbruck and the University of Granada on Islam-Christian relations. The meeting was also attended by a person from the Centre Sèvres in Paris. The webinar was to replace a more ambitious joint study week that was to take place in Granada and which had to be suspended due to the COVID 19. The webinar was attended by the research teams and professors interested in the subject from the three institutions, and the participants included a significant number of Muslims from different backgrounds. After a first round of presentation of each other, the webinar had two main parts: an introduction to the theoretical framework from which we want to work, given by Tobias Specker SJ, who seeks to reflect on the possibility of a contemporary Islamic-Christian civilization; and an introduction to the problem of the presence of religions in society, given by Ignacio Sepulveda, from the University Loyola Andalucia.

This webinar, and the study week it replaces, is part of the work of the cluster on Islam-Christian relations of the HEST project (Higher Education for Social Transformation) of the Society of Jesus in Europe. The aim of these efforts is to create a research network on various topics of capital importance for the Society in Europe, such as Islam-Christian dialogue. The joint work and the mutual knowledge of the teams of these three institutions committed to research in Islamic-Christian relations is intended to advance the development of a joint doctorate on this topic.