Professor Oddbjørn Leirvik

Biography

Oddbjørn Leirvik is a Professor of Interreligious Studies at the Faculty of Theology, University of Oslo. He is a founding member of the National Contact Group between the Church of Norway and the Islamic Council Norway.

His books in English include Images of Jesus Christ in Islam (2nd ed., 2010) Human Conscience and Muslim-Christian Relations (2006), and Interreligious Studies: A Relational Approach to Religious Activism and the Study of Religion (2014).

Lecture abstract

With its 4 % Muslim population, Norway has earned a certain reputation as a country with a confident and well-established dialogue between Christians, Muslims and secular humanists.

This may well be true at the level of the established faith communities. At the popular level, however, more confrontational discourses have been gaining ground, and the terrible massacre at Utøya on 22 July 2011 shook the self-image of Norway as a country of peace.

What are the achievements of Christian-Muslim dialogue in the Norwegian context, and how should one understand the relation between confrontational and dialogical attitudes?