“Man is an enemy of what he does not know”

as an ancient Arab saying goes.
 

From June 2018 to June 2021, the universities of Eichstätt-Ingolstadt (KU) and Erlangen-Nuremberg (FAU) cooperated in the joint research unit “Key Concepts in Interreligious Discourses” (represented by Prof. Dr. Christoph Böttigheimer, Chair of Fundamental Theology at the KU, and Prof. Dr. Georges Tamer, Chair of Oriental Philology and Islamic Studies at the FAU). The aim was to conduct basic research and establish an “archaeology of religious knowledge” in order to reveal similarities and differences between religions with the help of comparative conceptual historical studies. In addition, the project aimed to show how each religion's own self-understanding can be used to contribute to understanding and peace between religious communities.
 

To this end, KCID undertook a conceptual history of these three religions, taking into account the other communities in each case. The KCID project thus saw itself as a contribution to intensive scientific engagement with interreligious discourses. The aim was to reveal the theoretical roots of the various religious communities in the interest of mutual understanding.
 

At the scholarly level, the project aimed to address and publish central, historically developed concepts for the three monotheistic religions through the respective experts in the fields of theology, religious studies, and philosophy of religion, and thus to make them fruitful for the analysis of current and future developments.

In a first step, renowned scholars from the individual disciplines were invited to several specialist conferences to debate central concepts. In each conference, a concept was presented and debated from the perspective of each of the three religions covered by the project. In a second step, the results of these conferences were then recorded in English-language volumes. The book series of the same name is published by Walter de Gruyter (Berlin/Boston).