A Guide to the Supplementary Resources for 2012-2013

Below you will find supplementary resources pertinent to The Comparison Project’s 2012-2013 theme of Religious Responses to Suffering. These resources come from students in Prof. Knepper’s Fall 2012 Comparative Religions course and Spring 2013 Philosophy of Religion course. They are ordered from most recent (top) to least recent (bottom).

The Fall 2012 Comparative Religions course first examined then compared religious responses to suffering in Sikhism, Lakota traditions, and Islam. Below you will find some of their analytic and comparative papers as well as a few of their encyclopedic entries.

The Spring 2013 Philosophy of Religion first examined religious responses to suffering in Christianity, Judaism, and Buddhism, then compared and evaluated religious responses to suffering in all six of the religions considered in 2012-2013. Below you will find some of their comparative-evaluative papers.

 

Student Resources on Islam (Fall 2012 Comparative Religions)

Our section on Islam began with a consideration of Muslim responses to suffering in general (by way of John Bowker’s chapter on Islam in Problems of Suffering in Religions of the World), then read John Kiser’s 2010 book on the nineteenth-century Algerian freedom-fighter, Abd el-Kader (Commander of the Faithful).

Some students again chose to write short, encyclopedia-like entires on Islam: a introduction to Islam in general, an introduction to Muslim responses to suffering, and a reflection on what we learned about Muslim responses to suffering:

Other students instead wrote longer essays about the role that Abd el-Kader’s Muslim faith played in his responses to suffering during his resistance to French occupation of Algeria.  Here are some of them:

Student Resources on Sikhism (Fall 2012 Comparative Religions)

Our section on Sikhism began with Sikh explanations of suffering in general (in Pashaura Singh’s “Sikh Perspectives on Health and Suffering”), then turned to two instances of Sikh responses to suffering: the 1699 establishment of the Sikh Khalsa, and Nikky-Guninder Kaur Singh’s 2005 feminist re-memorization of the Khalsa (The Birth of the Khalsa).

One student offered to try her hand at encyclopedia-like entries for The Comparison Project website on Sikhism: a basic introduction to Sikhism, a basic introduction to Sikh responses to suffering, and a short essay on “what we learned” in our section on Sikhism.

The other students wrote papers either on the establishment of the Khalsa itself or on Prof. Singh’s feminist re-memorization of the Khalsa as a religious response to suffering.  Here are some of them: