New Books In Islamic Studies

In one of the most important books published in 2025—Dilemmas of Authenticity: The American Muslim Crisis of Faith, published by UNC Press—Zaid Adhami explores questions of religious doubt, authenticity, and crisis of faith. The book examines what many American Muslims describe as a crisis of faith, but Adhami shows that this crisis is less about losing belief and more about the pressures of authenticity. In a cultural moment where people are expected to be true to themselves and to believe sincerely, faith becomes something that must feel emotionally real and personally chosen. Drawing on ethnographic research and intimate conversations with American Muslims, Adhami shows how this demand for authenticity can produce doubt and anxiety, while also becoming a powerful ground for recommitment to tradition. The book challenges familiar narratives of secularization and religious decline, and instead offers a nuanced account of how faith is lived, questioned, and sustained in an age that privileges “authenticity.”

Their names are Mohamed, Samira, sometimes Matthieu or Sophie. They were born and bred in France and are highly qualified, but they have decided to go and live in London or New York, Montreal or Brussels, Geneva or Dubai. Many were discriminated against on the French job market, or stigmatized simply because of their religion or the sound of their names. Whether devout or not, they felt unloved and unwanted in France, but abroad they have found a sense of peace and fulfilment that their native country failed to give them.Based on extensive original research, France, You Love It but Leave It: The Silent Flight of French Muslims (Polity, 2025) by Dr. Olivier Esteves, Dr. Alice Picard, and Dr. Julien Talpin sheds new light on the silent and largely unacknowledged flight abroad of French Muslims. It explores their motivations, their experiences in France and abroad, and their sense of Frenchness, torn between gratitude and bitterness. This book isn't just about an unreported brain-drain - it is also about the del

Why Muslims in South India observe hierarchical intra-communal relationships despite the egalitarianism of their religionIn Seeking Allah’s Hierarchy: Caste, Labor, and Islam in India (U Pennsylvania Press, 2025), P. C. Saidalavi provides an ethnographic study of a Muslim barber community in South India, unraveling how these barbers negotiated concepts of hierarchy through Islamic values of piety, genealogy, morality, and wealth. Through this close-drawn study, Saidalavi argues that Muslim hierarchy exists and it works on its own terms. It both draws upon Islamic jurisprudential and moral discourses and is shaped by the larger economic, cultural, and political environment, including that of Hinduism. Yet ultimately, Muslim hierarchy is neither a replica nor a watered-down version of caste in Hinduism.Seeking Allah’s Hierarchy contends that the Islamization process in South Asia cannot be reduced to conceptual schemas or patterns dictating religious practice. Instead, this process works within a “lived tradit

Alaina Morgan's Atlantic Crescent: Building Geographies of Black and Muslim Liberation in the African Diaspora (UNC Press, 2025) introduces the conceptual framework of the “Atlantic Crescent” to capture the overlapping encounters between Black, Afro-Caribbean, and South Asian Muslims in the United States and the Caribbean. Using rich archival material, such as the Nation of Islam’s Muhammad Speaks, we learn about 20th century Black Muslim movements such as the Moorish Science Temple and the Nation of Islam as they encounter and engage with South Asian Muslim communities, like the Ahmadiyya movement in the US, as their discourses of global anti-imperial and decolonial struggles shaped or overlapped with each other. The second half of the book takes us to Bermuda to trace the translation of these Black Muslim liberation movements into the Caribbean. By focusing on the flow and encounters of these overlapping diasporas, we learn how anti-imperial and ant-colonial discourses were inhabited by varied South Asian,

Adam Bursi’s Traces of the Prophets: Relics and Sacred Spaces in Early Islam (Edinburg University Press, 2024) uses writings by early Muslims to map a history of material objects, relics, and tombs of prophetic figures as they were conceptualized in the 8th and 9th centuries. The book draws from various genres of writings, including biographies and hadith of the Prophet Muhammad and Qur’an commentaries and juristic compilations to capture the tensions and practices around tomb and relic veneration. Some of the discussion of Muslim relic veneration are polemical as they aim to establish some boundaries around similar pious practices amongst Jewish and Christian communities. In the process, we learn that there were indeed debates with regards to the post-mortem “traces” or “athar” of Muhammad’s tomb, which then impacted how spaces associated with him were also perceived, as well as other prophetic figures like Ibrahim (Abraham) or Daniel. Such examples raise conceptual questions of absence and presence and Prop

The Apocalypse of Pseudo-Methodius was one of the medieval world’s most popular and widely translated texts. Composed in Syriac in Mesopotamia in the seventh century, this supposed revelation presented a new, salvific role for the Roman Empire, whose last emperor, it prophesied, would help bring about the end of the ages. In this first book-length study of Pseudo-Methodius, Christopher J. Bonura uncovers the under-appreciated Syriac origins of this apocalyptic tract, revealing it as a remarkable response to political realities faced by Christians living under a new Islamic regime. Tracing the spread of Pseudo-Methodius from the early medieval Mediterranean to its dissemination via the printing presses of early modern Europe, Bonura then demonstrates how different cultures used this new vision of empire’s role in the end times to reconfigure their own realities. The book also features a new, complete, and annotated English translation of the Syriac text of Pseudo-Methodius. New books in Late Antiquity is Pres

In The New Crusades: Islamophobia and the Global War on Muslims (U California Press, 2023), Khaled A. Beydoun details how the American War on Terror has facilitated and intensified the network of anti-Muslim campaigns unfolding across the world. The New Crusades is the first book of its kind, offering a critical and intimate examination of global Islamophobia and its manifestations in Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and regions beyond and in between. Through trenchant analysis and direct testimony from Muslims on the ground, Beydoun interrogates how Islamophobia acts as a unifying global thread of state and social bigotry, instigating both liberal and right-wing hate-mongering. Whether imposed by way of hijab bans in France, state-sponsored hate speech and violence in India, or the network of concentration camps in China, Islamophobia unravels into distinct systems of demonization and oppression across the post-9/11 geopolitical landscape. Lucid and poignant, The New Crusades reveals that Islamophobia is not

In 1924, the Republic of Turkey voted to abolish the Ottoman caliphate, ending a 400-year-long claim by the Ottomans that they were the leaders of the Islamic world. Abdülmecid II—who had been elected to the position by the Republic of Turkey just two years before—decamped for Europe. What followed was a bold plan by Indian Muslims and the Nizam of Hyderabad, one of the world’s richest men at the time, to potentially revive the caliphate, as told in Imran Mulla’s book The Indian Caliphate, Exiled Ottomans and the Billionaire Prince (Hurst, 2025) Imran Mulla is a journalist at Middle East Eye in London, before which he studied history at the University of Cambridge. You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of The Indian Caliphate. Follow on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia. Nicholas Gordon is an editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at@nickrigordon. Learn more about your ad choi

Sri Lanka has long sat astride the monsoon winds between the Bay of Bengal and the Arabian Sea – a small island at the centre of a very big story. For over a thousand years, Muslim pilgrims, merchants, scholars, and soldiers have passed through “Lanka” or “Sarandib”, leaving traces in Arabic, Tamil, Persian, Malay, Ottoman Turkish, Urdu, Dhivehi, and Sinhala. Serendipitous Translations: A Sourcebook on Sri Lanka in the Islamic Indian Ocean (University of Texas Press, 2026) brings together many of those voices for the first time in English. From medieval travellers marvelling at Adam’s Peak to modern novelists and newspaper editors wrestling with reform, nationalism, and civil conflict. Dr. Nile Green holds the Ibn Khaldun Endowed Chair in World History at UCLA. A former Guggenheim Fellow, he is the celebrated author of ten monographs and the editor of seven books and several journal issues, with a particular focus on Islam and the Indian Ocean world. He also hosts the excellent podcast Akbar’s Chamber: Exper

According to a famous prophetic report, “Whoever imitates a people becomes one of them.” What does “imitation” here mean? Rather, what does this statement really mean at all, and how have Muslims historically understood it? How did this simple report become a doctrine in the Islamic tradition? What does this hadith mean for Muslims today, in an increasingly interreligious atmosphere and especially for those living in the West or in other non-Muslim-majority contexts? Finally, why do humans invest so much in being different and displaying their difference from those they declare as an ‘other’?  These and many other questions are answered in Youshaa Patel’s exciting book The Muslim Difference: Defining the Line between Believers and Unbelievers from Early Islam to the Present, published in 2022 with Yale University Press. The book explores the issue of difference and frames the hadith as significant to Muslim interreligious encounters, showing that ideas and examples of imitation—and Muslims’ understanding of t

In contemporary Indonesia the idea that Islam and Marxism are inherently incompatible has become deeply entrenched. However, as Lin Hongxuan's work Ummah Yet Proletariat: Islam, Marxism, and the Making of the Indonesian Republic (Oxford University Press, 2023) shows, the relationship between them in Indonesian history is deeply intertwined. Based on a wealth of Indonesian language sources, Lin traces over the half century between 1915 and 1965 how Islam and Marxism coexisted and converged in the Netherlands Indies and newly independent Indonesia. In addition to reframing Indonesian ideological history, the book also helpfully emphasises key actors’ engagement with broader intellectual currents to situate them in a global historical context. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/islamic-studies

From the end of the American Civil War to the start of World War II, the Protestant missionary movement unintentionally tilled the soil in which American Islamophobia would eventually take root. What ideas did missionaries in Islamic contexts pass on to later generations? How were these ideas connected to centuries-old Protestant discourses about Muslims and gender beginning in the Reformation? And what bearing does this history have on the birth of Islamophobia and on Christian-Muslim dialogue efforts in the US today? In answering these questions, Re-inventing Islam traces the gender constructs that have informed historical Protestant perceptions of Islam, especially in the far-reaching textual, visual, and material influences of the American and British movement for missions to Muslims. This book first considers Protestant discourse about Muslim women and men from the Reformation to the Enlightenment. Then it turns to the colossal archive of literature, images, and cultural objects that missionaries--and pa

In this episode, Amina Easat Daas and Claudia Radiven were in conversation with Shabna Begum to discuss her work with the Runnymede Trust, a British race equality and civil rights think tank. Shabna has worked with Runnymede since 2021 as a Senior Researcher, before becoming Director of Research, and finally CEO in May 2024. She is also author of, From Sylhet to Spitalfields: Bengali squatters in 1970s East London (2023). Shabna spoke with us about a number of issues relating to Islamophobia, immigration and the resurgence of Far-Right politics in the UK. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/islamic-studies

A concise new narrative history of Islam that draws on the transformative insights of recent research to emphasize the diversity and dynamism of the tradition. Today’s Muslim world has been experiencing upheaval: legalists and mystics engage in intense debates, radical groups invoke Sharia, Muslim immigrants in the West face prejudice and discrimination, and Muslim feminists advocate new interpretations of the Koran. At the same time, Islam is mischaracterized as unitary and unchanging by people ranging from right-wing Western politicians claiming that Islam is incompatible with democracy to conservative Muslims dreaming of returning to the golden age of the prophet.  Against this contentious backdrop, this book provides a timely new history of the religion in all its astonishing richness and diversity as it has been practiced by Muslims around the world, from seventh-century Mecca to today. Most popular histories of Islam continue to repeat conventional pietistic accounts. In contrast, John Tolan draws on d

In this episode, Amina Easat Daas and Claudia Radiven were in conversation with Peter Hopkins to discuss his work and most recent book, Everyday Islamophobia. The conversation ranged from UK counter-terror policy, to citizenship, the Far-Right, but largely on the mainstreaming of Islamophobia. Peter Hopkins is a Professor of Social Geography in the School of Geography, Politics and Sociology at Newcastle University. His interests centre upon issues of social inequality and justice with most of his research focusing upon the intersections of youth, migration and asylum, race and religion, and gender. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/islamic-studies

The Devotional Qur'an: Beloved Surahs and Verses (Yale UP, 2025) is a beautifully curated and translated collection of the Qur'anic surahs and verses that are most cherished and memorized by Muslims the world over. Muslim devotional practices vary greatly over time and across regions, communities, and denominations, but they share core Qur'anic surahs and verses rooted in the practice of earlier figures: the Prophet Muhammad, his closest Companions, the Shiite Imams, saintly figures, learned scholars, Sufi masters, local imams and religious teachers, forebears, and parents. This volume is the first to present a curated English translation of these core passages, offering a powerful distillation of the recitational tradition that is at the heart of Muslim faith and practice. In these translations of thirty-two surahs and some forty verses, Shawkat M. Toorawa gives attention to rhythm, assonance, and end rhyme, as well as to the musicality and emotional force of the original Arabic. He organizes the selections

The Assassins and the Templars. Two groups that are now part of popular legend–and not just because of Assassin’s Creed, the massive video game franchise starring the former as its heroes, and the latter as its villains. Steve Tibble takes on both these groups in his new book Assassins and Templars: A Battle in Myth and Blood (Yale UP, 2025). Steve takes us to the time of Crusades: a more crowded and dangerous Eastern Mediterranean, where varied groups–not just the Crusaders–jostled for power and influence. And he joins today to share how these two groups rose and, eventually, fell. Steve Tibble is honorary research associate at Royal Holloway, University of London. He is the author of The Crusader Armies: 1099–1187 (Yale University Press: 2016), The Crusader Strategy: Defending the Holy Land (Yale University Press: 2020), Templars: The Knights Who Made Britain (Yale University Press: 2023), and Crusader Criminals: The Knights Who Went Rogue in the Holy Land (Yale University Press: 2024). You can find mor

In this episode, Claudia Radiven and Chella Ward talked with Kamran Khan about linguistics, citizenship and belonging. The conversation travelled from the 2001 Northern riots in the UK, to the Prevent policy, all the way to more recent adjustments to the Nationalities and Borders Bill. Khan is currently the director of the MOSAIC research group on multilingualism and an associate professor of language, social justice and education. He also wrote the book “Becoming a Citizen: Linguistic Trials and Negotiations in the UK”. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/islamic-studies

In this episode, Chella Ward and Hizer Mir sat down with Sarah Bracke and Luis Manuel Hernández Aguilar to talk about their recent book on a racist and Islamophobic conspiracy theory known as ‘the Great Replacement’. We talked about the long history of this idea, and how it might be resisted in the present. Sarah Bracke is Professor of the Sociology of Gender and Sexuality at the University of Amsterdam, and Luis Manuel Hernández Aguilaran is an associate researcher at the European University Viadrina. They are the co-editors of The Politics of Replacement (2024). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/islamic-studies

Faisal Devji's Waning Crescent: The Rise and Fall of Global Islam (Yale UP, 2025) is a compelling examination of the rise of Islam as a global historical actor. Until the nineteenth century, Islam was variously understood as a set of beliefs and practices. But after Muslims began to see their faith as an historical actor on the world stage, they needed to narrate Islam's birth anew as well as to imagine its possible death. Faisal Devji argues that this change, sparked by the crisis of Muslim sovereignty in the age of European empire, provided a way of thinking about agency in a global context: an Islam liberated from the authority of kings and clerics had the potential to represent the human race itself as a newly empirical reality. Ordinary Muslims, now recognized as the privileged representatives of Islam, were freed from traditional forms of Islamic authority. However, their conception of Islam as an impersonal actor in history meant that it could not be defined in either religious or political terms. Its