Several key verses from the Qur’an concerning the role and status of Christians will be discussed in a Lawrence University Main Hall Forum.
Rachel Scott, a visiting lecturer in religious studies at Lawrence, presents “The Qur’an, Christians and Modern Islamist Thought,” Tuesday, May 17 at 4:45 p.m. in Main Hall, Room 101. The event is free and open to the public.
The verses highlighted in the presentation concern Jews and Christians in general, but Scott will focus on how those verses relate to the proposed legal and social status of Coptic Christians within a proposed Egyptian Islamic state. She will analyze different interpretations of these verses, arguing that modern Islamist thought is not monolithic, but rather is represented by a spectrum of thinkers who have competing visions as to what the true nature of Islam is.
Scott, whose research interests include Islamic intellectual history, Christian-Muslim relations and the social and political origins of the Islamic movement joined the religious studies department at the start of Term III after previously teaching in the department of Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Manchester in England.
She earned her bachelor’s degree in Arabic and Islamic history at Oxford University’s Pembroke College and her Ph.D. in Islamic studies at the University of London. In addition, Scott has studied Arabic at the University of Alexandria in Egypt and Hebrew at the University of Jerusalem. This fall she will join the faculty of Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University as an assistant professor of religious studies.
