Eastern Christianity is pluralistic. How might exchanges among Christians in geographic areas where different expressions of Christianity developed in the ancient Near and Middle East have been determining factors in the evolution of specific Churches? Encounters among Christians during Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages resulted in fertile adaptations and enrichments leading, through mutations and cross-influences, to the emergence of new identities. Such interculturality provides a response to the challenges of the dominating Byzantine, Persian, and Arabic cultures, as expressed through intellectual currents, artistic influences, and constructions of traditions. 

The Muslim thinker al-Ghazali (d. 1111) was one of the most influential theologians and philosophers of Islam and has been considered an authority in both Western and Islamic philosophical traditions. Born in northeastern Iran, he held the most prestigious academic post in Islamic theology in Baghdad, only to renounce the position and teach at small schools in the provinces for no money. His contributions to Islamic scholarship range from responding to the challenges of Aristotelian philosophy to creating a new type of Islamic mysticism and integrating both these traditions–falsafa and Sufism–into the Sunni mainstream. This book offers a comprehensive study of al-Ghazali's life and his understanding of cosmology–how God creates things and events in the world, how human acts relate to God's power, and how the universe is structured. 

Iran’s Secretary General of World Assembly of Islamic Religious Proximity said that Islam and Orthodox Christianity talks have made Iran and Russia close to each other.

Dumbarton Oaks will hold a symposium entitled ‘Rome Re-Imagined: Byzantine and Early Islamic Africa, c. 500–800’, from April 27–29, 2012. The event is organised by Susan T. Stevens, Randolph College and Jonathan P. Conant, Brown University.

The reign of Constantine (306-37), the starting point for the series in which this volume appears, saw Christianity begin its journey from being just one of a number of competing cults to being the official religion of the Roman/Byzantine Empire. The involvement of emperors had the, perhaps inevitable, result of a preoccupation with producing, promoting and enforcing a single agreed version of the Christian creed. Under this pressure Christianity in the East fragmented into different sects, disagreeing over the nature of Christ, but also, in some measure, seeking to resist imperial interference and to elaborate Christianities more reflective of and sensitive to local concerns and cultures.