One Moses, Two Scriptures: The Torah and the Qur'an in Conversation

Room 310. The Torah and the Qur'an tell stories about many of the same figures — above all, Moses, the prophet the Qur'an names more often than any other. For fourteen centuries, Jews and Muslims have interpreted these stories through traditions in each other's shadow, amid rivalry, exchange and mutual influence. What happens when they are read side by side? Join GW's Ambassador John L. Loeb, Jr. Institute for Religious Freedom and Democracy for a discussion about what the two scriptures share, where they diverge and what reading them together can — and cannot — do for Jews and Muslims today. Speakers: Rick Sopher (Woolf Institute) is co-author (with Abdulla Galadari) of the recently published Illuminating Scriptural Connections: A Qur'anic Commentary on the Torah (Jewish Publication Society, 2026), which reads every weekly Torah portion alongside the Qur'an.Mustafa Akyol (Cato Institute), author of The Islamic Moses: How the Prophet Inspired Jews and Muslims to Flourish Together and Change the World (St. Martin's, 2024), has explored the common religious grammar of law, prophecy and scholarship that has connected Judaism and Islam across the centuries.Historian of Islam Joel Blecher, associate professor of history at George Washington University, is a scholar of Islamic intellectual history and traditions of textual interpretation.RSVP >>