Sharing religious texts between the People of the Book

In the era of Muslim Spain, Muslim and Jewish intellectuals would engage in dialectics and read each other's religious texts.

One example of this is the relationship that Muslim philosopher Ibn Rushd aka Averroes shared with his contemporary Maimonides, a Jewish philosopher. Many of Ibn Rushd's works were translated into Hebrew.

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SHARING FAITHS: Program brings sacred Jewish texts to mosques
June 29, 2007

BY DAVID CRUMM

FREE PRESS RELIGION WRITER

A national pilot program to link Jews and Muslims with sacred books kicked off in Detroit on Thursday with the delivery of 17 Jewish books to one of the city's leading mosques.

"I hope this idea extends from Detroit across the U.S. and even throughout the world," Dawud Walid, Michigan director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said as a Jewish delegation from Oakland County delivered the first collection of Jewish books to a local mosque.

The books included translations and commentaries on the Torah, which Christians regard as the first five books of their Bible. Many of the early figures in the Jewish Bible, including Abraham, are considered sacred figures in Islam.

The idea of combating bigotry by sharing sacred texts isn't new. In 2002, Walid's Washington, D.C.-based group kicked off a three-year campaign to place Muslim books in nearly 8,000 public libraries across the country.

The effort launched Thursday is designed to bring Jewish books directly into Muslim centers across Michigan and eventually other parts of the United States.(MORE)