New Books In Islamic Studies

In this episode, Richard Bulliet talks about his work in world and Islamicate history. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/islamic-studies

Tazin Abdullah speaks with Dr Ibrar Bhatt about heritage literacies, particularly as they are practiced by Chinese Muslims. Bhatt is the author of A Semiotics of Muslimness in China (Cambridge UP, 2023). About the book:  A Semiotics of Muslimness in China examines the semiotics of Sino-Muslim heritage literacy in a way that integrates its Perso-Arabic textual qualities with broader cultural semiotic forms. Using data from images of the linguistic landscape of Sino-Muslim life alongside interviews with Sino-Muslims about their heritage, the author examines how signs of 'Muslimness' are displayed and manipulated in both covert and overt means in different contexts. In so doing the author offers a 'semiotics of Muslimness' in China and considers how forms of language and materiality have the power to inspire meanings and identifications for Sino-Muslims and understanding of their heritage literacy. The author employs theoretical tools from linguistic anthropology and an understanding of semiotic assemblage to de

In this episode of Radio ReOrient we return to the literary theme of this season, to explore the work of Laury Silvers. Laury is the author of many successful book series set in the past and present of the Islamicate, including her Sufi Mysteries Quartet set in 10th Century Baghdad. In this interview she tells Saeed Khan and Salman Sayyid about her work, about the way that orientalism structures so many representations of Muslims and Muslim societies, and about how important it is for Muslims to be empowered to imagine themselves on their own terms. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/islamic-studies

Fatima, the daughter of Prophet Muhammad, has an interesting legacy, one that is often shaped by sectarian differences and tensions. The sermon of Fatima, which is the focus of Mahjabeen Dhala's Feminist Theology and Sociology of Islam: A Study of the Sermon of Fatima (Cambridge University Press, 2024), though itself riddled with questions of authenticity, is a compelling incident which brings to light various possibilities of analysis and insights. The issue of fadak or inheritance, which prompts Fatima to take a public stance against the male leaders of the community, such as Abu Bakr, after the passing of her father, results in a rich sermon that has theological and social justice implications, as Dhala highlights. In Dhala's reading of the sermon by Fatima and her response to an injustice experienced by her and her family, Fatima is seen as a theologian and a social activist. Moreover, this study also sheds on light of an example of pre-modern history of Muslim woman’s resistance. This book will be of int

Contemporary thought typically places a strong emphasis on the exclusive and competitive nature of Abrahamic monotheisms. This instinct is certainly borne out by the histories of religious wars, theological polemic, and social exclusion involving Jews, Christians, and Muslims. But there is also another side to the Abrahamic coin. Even in the midst of communal rivalry, Jews, Christians, and Muslim practitioners have frequently turned to each other to think through religious concepts, elucidate sacred history, and enrich their ritual practices. Scholarship often describes these interactions between the Abrahamic monotheisms using metaphors of exchange between individuals-as if one tradition might borrow a theological idea from another in the same way that a neighbour might borrow a recipe. The Abrahamic Vernacular (Cambridge University Press, 2024) by Dr. Rebecca Wollenberg proposes that there are deeper forms of entanglement at work in these historical moments. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melc

In this very exciting book that I couldn’t put down - Neo-Traditionalism in Islam in the West: Orthodoxy, Spirituality, and Politics (Edinburgh University Press, 2023) - Walaa Quisay explores the trend of white male convert neo-traditionalist scholars in the West and their relationship with young seekers of sacred knowledge. She highlights the meanings of "tradition" that these scholars imagine and preach, even if it does not fit the reality of the Muslim cultures and countries that they imagine as purveyors of tradition.  Walaa particularly tells the story of three main shaykhs - Hamza Yusuf, Abdal Hakim Murad, and Umar Faruq Abd-Allah. She analyzes their perceptions of modernity, which they insist is destructive to the tradition, their ideas being very similar to white conservative western thinkers. Their idea of the tradition involves a kind of authentic Islam and Islamic tradition that only existed in the past because they have been polluted with modernity, especially with ideas of gender and social equal

In this episode Hizer Mir and his co-author Sahar Ghumkhor talk to Shareef Muhammad about the phenomenon of Muslims in the Manosphere. Shareef is a scholar of history based in Atlanta, Georgia, who works on Muslims, race and third worldism - especially the experience of Black Muslims in the context of imperial America. This interview results from an article Sahar and Hizer wrote about the Muslim Manosphere, which observes the behaviour of Muslim men in alt right online spaces. Together with Shareef, they explain what drives these Muslim men to make alarming alliances with the far-right white supremacist men they meet online, and what this means for their understanding of Muslim masculinity. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/islamic-studies

An interview with Dr. Nadia Fadil who speaks about secularism the state and Islam. We delve into questions such as what it means to call Islam a lived and embodied reality and what the relationship is between Islam and secularism. 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 we celebrate the release of a special issue of the ReOrient journal, ‘Hindutva and the Muslim Subject’, edited by Sheheen Kattiparambil. Shvetal Vyas Pare and Sheheen sat down to discuss the special issue, introducing what Hindutva is and how it relates to global projects of Islamophobia within and beyond India (including Tel Aviv’s genocide in Palestine). ‘Hindutva and the Muslim Subject’ is issue 8.2 of ReOrient, and is available freely via open access from Pluto Journals here. Let us know what you think by contacting us on socials: @cmsreorient. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/islamic-studies

 Dr Sabrina Lei, Director of Tawasul Europe Centre for Dialogue and Research, is an emerging Italian Muslim philosopher and thinker. Trained in Latin, Greek and ancient philosophy for over a decade, with a PhD from Pontifical Gregorian University (one of the prominent centres of Catholic scholarship in Rome) in ancient Greek philosophy. Dr Sabrina has, so far, translated over 25 Muslim classics into Italian, besides producing her own five books, including a biography of Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) and the recently released book : Le comunita religioso non-musulmane nel mondo islamico : Un introduzione storica ( The non-Muslim Religious Community in the Muslim World : A Historical Introduction, March 2019). Some of her noted achievements include acclaimed Italian translations of Muhammad Iqbal’s philosophical reflection on Islam called The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam.  Dr Sabrina is currently working to publish a new edition of Abdullah Yusuf Ali’s original English Quran translation,

The third episode of this season of Radio ReOrient continues our project this season of returning to the first principles of Critical Muslim Studies. In the previous episode, Hizer Mir and Salman Sayyid discussed post-positivism: here they turn to post-orientalism. The advent of Edward Said’s Orientalism in 1978 shook the foundations of many academic disciplines. Not only Oriental Studies (which was the most obvious object of Said’s critique) but almost every discipline found itself asking the question: how should we respond to Said’s Orientalism? How should our subjects be studied differently now that we know what we know about knowledge production? In this episode we delve into some of these questions. 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 conversation with award-winning academic Dr. Shabana Mir discussing her book Muslim American Women on Campus: Undergraduate Social Life and Identity (UNC Press, 2016) Interviewer: Sofia Rehman. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/islamic-studies

This episode is the first of three special episodes in this season of Radio ReOrient in which we look back on the first principles of Critical Muslim Studies. In this episode, Hizer Mir talks to Salman Sayyid about post-positivism - what it means, what it offers, and how it relates to the project of decolonising. The discussion that we kick off here will reverberate throughout this series, as we return to talk in later episodes about post-orientalism and decoloniality. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/islamic-studies

An interview with Prof. Salman Sayyid on post-orientalism, what it means and its place in Critical Muslim Studies.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/islamic-studies

Nahj al-Balagha is among the most powerful, consequential, and linguistically brilliant masterpieces of Arabic and of Islamic thought and literature. Based on the orations, letters, and sayings of wisdom of ‘Ali ibn Abi Talib (d. 661), the first Imam or successor to Prophet Muhammad in Shi‘i Islam and the fourth caliph in Sunni Islam, this oral treasure was compiled and brought together as a text by the late tenth/early eleventh scholar and poet Al-Sharif al-Radi (d. 1015).  In this episode I speak with Professor Tahera Qutbuddin who has provided us with a majestic and brilliant complete English translation of Nahj al-Balagha titled Nahj al-Balāgha: The Wisdom and Eloquence of ‘Alī (Brill, 2024), a parallel English-Arabic text published open access by Brill. The publication of this volume is an event of seismic importance in the study of Islam, religion, and Arabic. Qutbuddin’s translation is animated with the purpose of rendering the Arabic text of Nahj al-Balagha in English in a fashion that amplifies its l

In Breathtaking Revelations: The Science of Breath from the Fifty Kamarupa Verses to Hazrat Inayat Khan (Suluk Press, 2024), Carl W. Ernst and Patrick J. D’Silva explore the intersections of Sufi and yogic breath-based meditation. Ernst and D’Silva offer us here two stunning texts for study.  The first, an anonymous Persian translation of a 14th century manuscript that introduces us to a variety of divinations, incantations, and much more, as well as a thorough outline of the science of the breath, based on whether it comes out from the left or right nostrils and its significance. This text especially is fascinating for its incantations to yogini devis (or female spirits).  The second text under consideration is Hazrat Inayat Khan’s The Science of the Breath dictated in English to his student Zohra Williams in the early 20th century. There are numerous similarities across these two texts separated by centuries, especially the focus on breath divination based on left and right nostrils (in this instance associ

An interview with Salman Sayyid about decoloniality and its place in Critical Muslim Studies.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/islamic-studies

Radio ReOrient is back for another season, and this time Hizer Mir is joined by a new team of hosts: Claudia Radiven, Saeed Khan and Chella Ward. In this first episode Hizer and Chella interview Ambereen Dadabhoy, associate professor of literature at Harvey Mudd College, about her brand new book Shakespeare through Islamic Worlds (Routledge, 2024). In the process we discover Shakespeare’s secret Muslim characters, travel around an early modern Mediterranean that is nothing like the border of Europe we know today, and ask whether it is possible to talk about Islamophobia much earlier in history than its conventional beginnings. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/islamic-studies

Ibrahim Fraihat’s latest book, Iran and Saudi Arabia: Taming a Chaotic Conflict (Edinburgh University Press, 2020) is much more than an exploration of the history of animosity between Saudi Arabia and Iran and its debilitating impact on an already volatile Middle East. It is a detailed roadmap for management and resolution of what increasingly looks like an intractable conflict. Based on years of field research, Fraihat builds a framework that initially could help Saudi Arabia and Iran prevent their conflict from spinning out of control, create mechanisms for communication and travel down a road of confidence building that could create building blocks for a resolution. Fraihat’s book could not have been published at a more critical moment. A devastating coronavirus pandemic has hit both Saudi Arabia and Iran hard. So has the associated global economic breakdown and the collapse of oil markets. The double whammies constitute the most existential crisis the kingdom has faced in at least half a century. They hit

The Damascus Events: The 1860 Massacre and the Destruction of the Old Ottoman World (Basic Book, 2024) recreates one of the watershed moments in the history of the Middle East: the ferocious outbreaks of disorder across the Levant in 1860 which resulted in the massacre of thousands of Christians in Damascus. Eugene Rogan brilliantly recreates the lost world of the Middle East under Ottoman rule. The once mighty empire was under pressure from global economic change and European imperial expansion. Reforms in the mid-nineteenth century raised tensions across the empire, nowhere more so than in Damascus. A multifarious city linked by caravan trade to Baghdad, the Mediterranean and Mecca, the chaos of languages, customs and beliefs made Damascus a warily tolerant place. Until the reforms began to advantage the minority Christian community at the expense of the Muslim majority. But in 1860 people who had generally lived side by side for generations became bitter enemies as news of civil war in Mount Lebanon arrive