Journal of Interreligious Studies

From the Editor-in-Chief

Axel Marc Oaks Takács — 2026-06-24

Issue 49 is a special issue on Teaching Israel/Palestine, guest edited by Geoffrey D. Claussen, Barış Kesgin, and David J. Marshall.

Guest Editors’ Introduction

Geoffrey D. Claussen — 2026-06-24

Guest Editors Geoffrey D. Claussen, Barış Kesgin, and David J. Marshall introduce this special issue on teaching Israel/Palestine.

A Comparative Framework Approach for Teaching and Talking about Palestine/ Israel

Maha Nassar — 2026-06-24

How can we expand our conversations about Palestine/Israel to include a fuller range of student perspectives? In this article, I propose a “comparative framework approach” to help educators, facilitators, and administrators foster better conversations in classrooms, on campuses, and beyond. In contrast to approaches that center identity as sources of friction to be transcended, I argue that focusing on frameworks more effectively includes the perspectives of pro-Palestine students who center decolonization in their ethical worldviews. Drawing on insights from critical religious literacy, I outline three frameworks—peace through surrender, peace through dialogue, and justice through liberation—that have shaped discourse on Palestine/Israel in the United States. I then show how different frameworks have developed historically and have informed interreligious encounters, including during the 2024 student encampments. Last, I suggest ways to incorporate the comparative framework approach to ensure that all students are supported in their intellectual, personal, and ethical journeys.

A Subversive Pedagogy for Teaching Palestine/Israel

Atalia Omer — 2026-06-24

In this article I show that teaching with intellectual integrity means we have to name what the evidence presents as what it is. Teaching with intellectual integrity means resisting the overwhelming force of institutional gaslighting. I first sketch what the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance's definition of antisemitism is and its history before turning to how its adoption makes teaching Palestine/Israel with intellectual integrity impossible by design. I then discuss, secondly, how I navigated the demands of intellectual (and ethical) integrity in my courses on Palestine/Israel. I introduce my multifocal pedagogical methodology and use of the syllabi to counter epistemic violence. Finally, I return to the question of why it is crucial to use the correct words and concepts to describe what we are talking about when we teach Palestine/Israel and why such intellectual integrity and analytic precision not only rectify the epistemic violence that denied Palestinian narratives of what Zionism has meant for their experiences. Such analytic clarity also reaches beyond Zionist and Israeli historiography to multiple Jewish counter-archives. Introducing students to alternative Jewish historical and religio-cultural archives is especially generative in situating the study of Palestine/Israel within a broader examination of Christian European modernity and in pointing toward a constructive reimagining of Jewishness in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region.

Teaching The Palestinian-Israeli Conflict Through Graphic Narrative

Brian Hillman — 2026-06-24

This article argues for the pedagogical utility of graphic narratives for teaching the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the discipline of Religious Studies. Graphic narratives articulate the perspective of an author. These texts present the perspectives as dynamic, shaped by an author’s identity and life experience, but not bound by it. They also provide important historical background about the conflict while encouraging student engagement through the affective experience of studying a visual and textual medium. This article explores three themes of graphic narratives that facilitate the study of the conflict in a religious studies framework: (1) the role of religious education in shaping political identity; (2) the narration of history; (3) the depiction of violence. It focuses on works by American (Sarah Glidden, Amy Kurzweil, Harvey Pekar, and Joe Sacco), Palestinian (Leila Abdelrazaq and Mohammad Sabaaneh) and Israeli (Boaz Yakin, Ari Folman with David Polonsky and Tohar Sherman-Friedman) authors.

Harmonizing Narratives

Oren Kroll-Zeldin — 2026-06-24

This article argues that using Palestinian and Israeli music in the classroom fosters deeper, more personal engagement with Israeli and Palestinian societies. By listening to and analyzing music, students explore cultural and political complexities embedded in popular music while encountering Palestinian and Israeli societies as robust groups existing far beyond the boundaries of conflict, each with their own unique and flourishing modes of cultural production. This pedagogical approach uses music to examine how music reflects and challenges political identities, including the students’ own ways of being in the world. It humanizes the conflict, connecting students to course material in relatable ways and highlighting emotional and cultural dimensions often overlooked in traditional texts. Ultimately, this pedagogy provides educators with tools to facilitate multinarrative learning and critical thinking in an engaging, fun, and accessible way.

Dialogues on the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict in Baltimore

Benjamin Sax — 2026-06-24

I work at a 501(c)3 non-profit in Baltimore that combats religious bigotry and co-builds resilient interreligious communities. The Israeli- Palestinian conflict has always brought challenges to this work. However, Hamas’ murderous rampage on October 7, 2023 and what the majority of human rights organizations inside of and outside of the State of Israel see as the IDF’s subsequent genocide against Gazans has made our work nearly impossible. There is also the added challenge of the increased weaponization of accusations of antisemitism to silence pro-Palestinian advocacy—especially by the targeted use of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism—as well as the weaponization of U.S. Immigration and Enforcement (ICE) to detain and deport pro-Palestinian advocates. The paper shares and examines a program we have been running for our constituencies since October 7th. It explores the challenges of weaponized accusations of antisemitism and offers a way forward for practitioners of interreligious dialogue who don’t always agree about how to interpret this conflict.

Israel/Palestine and Campus-Wide Teaching-Learning Events

Laurence Roth — 2026-06-24

Drawing on their experience in organizing a panel on the Israel- Hamas conflict in February of 2024 for a campus-wide teachinglearning event, the authors analyze that event as an artifact for understanding the tensions between neutral-aspiring and affect-laden language. They then consider the challenges of affect for discursive forums and the role that a mindful form of affect, intellectual empathy, can play in addressing it. They conclude with observations about the effects of different types of venues on the efficacy of that role and with a renewed commitment to campus-wide teaching-learning events that address Israel/Palestine and similarly difficult topics at their university so that students can incorporate and understand how affect is part of the different approaches they will need to interpret, internalize, and struggle to understand political tragedies as they unfold.

Teaching Israel/Palestine When the Stakes are Highest

Liora Halperin — 2026-06-24

This article explores the challenges of teaching Israel/Palestine in a moment of extreme violence, political polarization, and constraints on academic freedom. Drawing on a family history that traverses both Palestinian and Israeli narratives, it argues that pedagogy must foreground the coexistence of multiple, entangled histories while confronting deep asymmetries of power, sovereignty, and historical erasure. The author advocates teaching Israel/Palestine as a connected field shaped by competing narratives rather than isolated national histories. Through classroom practices—contrasting historical starting points, role-playing diverse actors, and analyzing activist organizations—students learn to represent multiple perspectives and assess their stakes. The article ultimately calls for a pedagogy that is transparent about its choices, attentive to marginalized histories, especially Palestinian experiences, and committed to intellectual rigor, ethical awareness, and critical engagement.

Teaching Israel/Palestine as Jews

Emily Schneider — 2026-06-24

In this conversation, three Jewish faculty members who teach about Palestine/Israel at university campuses in the United States discuss the practical and political components of their pedagogy and their role on campus. Hilary Kalisman of the University of Colorado, Boulder, Michal Raucher of Rutgers University, and Emily Schneider of Northern Arizona University share their approaches to teaching about Palestine/Israel, the tensions they struggle with, their concerns about students and faculty, and how they are dealing with the politics surrounding Palestine/Israel on campuses in the aftermath of October 7, 2023.

Effective Both-Siderism in the Midst of a Genocide

Mahan Mirza — 2026-06-24

This essay examines a unique, high-stakes pedagogical initiative undertaken at the University of Notre Dame following the October 7, 2023 attacks, initiated in response to campus tensions and student protests. The provost of the University, in response to student protests and a commitment made by the University's president, invited a Muslim professor of global affairs sympathetic to the pro-Palestine movement to co-lead a year-long campus-wide Israel/Palestine series in partnership with a Jewish colleague who identifies as a liberal Zionist. Both professors were trained in religious studies, one specializing in Islam and the other in Judaism. The essay shares the dilemmas, challenges, and successes of hosting such a series at a time when constructive public engagement on Israel/Palestine had become next to impossible. The essay is a case-study in what might be called “whiplash pedagogy,” where students are invited to go back and forth between contested and perhaps irreconcilable narratives. The essay explains the pedagogical choices made, speakers invited, texts selected, and partners engaged for dialogue/encounter, as well as lessons learned through the overall reception of the series from a diverse campus community and selectively invited public audience.

Teaching Israel/Palestine to Build Community on Campus

Russell CD Arnold — 2026-06-24

This article is a scholarly reflection on the experience of teaching a class on Israel/Palestine at Regis University four times over the last decade. Indebted to Parker J. Palmer’s “Habits of the Heart that Make Democracy Possible,” this author explores some of the skills and experiences that have served to impact the wider campus community toward a more just and humane world. The article begins by discussing welcoming all participants into a more open and honest engagement with such a highly charged and almost universally contentious conversation. We are challenged to speak knowing our understanding is partial, and listen for what the other’s perspective can add to our understanding rather than to find their faults. Next, the author recounts experiences of engaging the complexity of the Other within the classroom and in public events on campus. This is accomplished by seeking out a wider range of perspectives and wrestling with the tension between the correctness of our use of language and our effectiveness in deepening our understanding and transforming our conflicts. The article concludes with a call to make plans to make a difference; for each of us to take an active role in transforming ourselves and the communities in which we live, learn, and work toward the world we want.

From Radical Hospitality to Radical Hope

Diya Abdo — 2026-06-24

In this piece, Dr. Diya Abdo, Palestinian scholar, writer, and refugee activist, reflects on how building a movement of “resettlement campuses” across the US—colleges and universities that host refugee families on campus grounds and support them in their integration journey while engaging the campus and wider community—is informed by the hope for, and faith in, a free Palestine. Compelled by her Palestinian parents’ and grandparents’ experiences of displacement and the responsibilities of working at an American college, Dr. Abdo formulates a conceptual journey for higher education, from radical hospitality through radical accountability to radical hope, where the belief in justice for Palestine is indivisible from the hope for a truly democratic America and an equitable world.

Ibn ‘Arabī’s Religious Pluralism: Levels of Inclusivity

Yusri Mohamad Ramli — 2026-06-24

Book Review: Ibn ʿArabī’s Religious Pluralism: Levels of Inclusivity. By Faris Abdel-hadi. Routledge, 2025. 266 pp. ISBN 978-1-032-77640-8. $145.00 (hardcover); $45.99 (paperback); $45.99 (e-book).

From Outlaw to In-Law: How Multicultural Interfaith Couples Can Become Agents for Social Change

Matthew Maruggi — 2026-06-24

Book Review: From Outlaw to In-Law: How Multicultural Interfaith Couples Can Become Agents for Social Change. By Tanya Sadagopan. Wipf & Stock Publishers, 2024. ix + 174 pp. ISBN: 978-1-6667-7951-6 (hardcover). ISBN: 978-1-6667-7950-9 (paperback). ISBN: 978-1-6667-77952-3 (e-book). $40.00 (hardcover). $25.00 (paperback and e-book).