Outline

Today, we urgently need to raise grass-roots understanding of religions, rather than sophisticated dialogues among religions by scholars and religious leaders. Ordinary people, not always concerned with religions, need to live together with peoples of other faiths, civilizations and nations, without any prejudice.

The followings are of features of the grass-roots understanding of religions. First, it needs to understand daily ritual and religious life-style rather than religious thoughts. Secondly, to communicate about religions of one's own and others', people should have basic knowledge and jargons on religions. Third, in order to raise such grass-roots understanding, religious education in its wide sense will be needed, which may be difficult. Prejudice can be conquered by nothing but the intellectual knowledge of religions.

ODA YOSHIKO is Professor in the Faculty of Letters of Kansai University in Osaka, Japan. Prior to joining Kansai University, she was associate professor at Kyoto Women's University (1989-1997). She is an expert on the history of religions and Islam and has published many essays on Islamic thought, religious community, ethics and law in religions, and methodological problems. Her main publications include "The Concept of the Ummah in the Qur'an" (Orient, 1984), "Muhammad as the Judge: An Examination of the Specific Quality of Muhammad's Charismatic Authority", (Orient, 1987), "The Concepts of Evil and Sins in Islam" (in: Problems of Evil and Sin in Religions [Tokyo, 1991, in Japanese]), "Ethics and law in religions" (in: Journal of the Institution for Religion and Culture at Kyoto Women's University [1992, in Japanese]), "Methodologies in the History of Religions" (in: History of Religions: Series of New Liberal Arts [Kyoto, 1999, in Japanese]), and "Religions in Ordinary Life" (in: The ground of religion and modernity [Kyoto, 2000, in Japanese]).