Islam

People know of the Muslim concept of jihad or holy war or the Crusades of Christianity, but do not usually view Buddhism as having anything similar. A careful examination of the Buddhist texts, however, particularly “The Kalachakra Tantra” literature, reveals both external and...

An overview of the basic Buddhist concepts that allowed Islam to consider Buddhists “People of the Book” – those who follow the ethical teachings of a higher authority.

With the hope of defraying some common misunderstandings and exploring resonances between Islam and Buddhism, “Inquiring Mind” set up a conversation between Dr. Alexander Berzin and Dr. Snjezana Akpinar, a Buddhist practitioner with an academic background in Islam.

A comprehensive overview of the history of Buddhism in Afghanistan from shortly after the time of the Buddha up until the end of the Mongol period in the 14th century.

The early period of the Abbasid Caliphate (750–840 CE) saw the translation of Buddhist texts into not only the languages of East Turkistan, but also into Turkic languages and even some into Arabic, as Islam slowly spread into West Turkistan.

A survey of the history of Buddhist-Muslim interaction during the first millennium after the Prophet, focusing on the level of knowledge that the Indo-Tibetan Buddhist tradition had of Islam, as found in the Kalachakra literature, and the points that it had identified as being...

During the first millennium CE, Muslims were interested to learn of the beliefs of the peoples they had conquered and now ruled, including Buddhism, while Buddhists were interested in other beliefs only when they were vying with them in debate for royal patronage and that...

Outlines of similarities between Sufism and Buddhism go in the right direction concerning generalities, but need to be supplemented with detailed analyses of specific cases in order to avoid misunderstanding.

The situation of religion in the People’s Republic of China had deteriorated over the two years since 1994, with Buddhism facing the most difficulties of all the religions. At that time, in contrast to Buddhism, Islam was not considered a threat to people’s allegiance to the...