Research Notes: A Comparative Study of Jewish, Christian and Islamic Fundamentalist Perspectives on Jerusalem: Implications for Inter-faith Relations

One of the most salient aspects of the Arab-Israeli confl ict in the last thirty years has been the growing power of ‘religious fundamentalism’ within the three ‘Abrahamic faiths’ (Judaism, Christianity and Islam), and the focus of religious confl ict in the Holy Land on the question of Jerusalem. The opposing radical religious forces of Judaism, Christianity and Islam seem increasingly unable to fi nd common ground, with ‘religious fundamentalists’ on all sides the usual scapegoats. Many academic studies on the Holy Land have tried to explain this by looking at the fundamentalist perspectives of the individual religions, but it is unusual for researchers to investigate the fundamentalist movements of these three religions in comparative terms. In 2002 the Holy Land Research Project of the School of Theology, Philosophy and History, St Mary’s College, was awarded a three-year research grant from the Arts and Humanities Research Council (formerly AHRB) to carry out such research. The grant was for a major project on Jerusalem entitled: ‘A comparative study of Jewish, Christian and Islamic fundamentalist perspectives on Jerusalem, and their implications’. The project started on 1 September 2002 and ended on 31 August 2005. The personnel of the project consisted of Dr Michael Prior, Dr Nur Masalha and a part-time