New Books Network
Islamic Studies
Religion February 26, 2021

Dangerous Religious Ideas

The Deep Roots of Self-Critical Faith in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam

Rachel S. Mikva

Hosted by Yakir Englander
Dangerous Religious Ideas: The Deep Roots of Self-Critical Faith in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam (Beacon, 2020) reveals how faith traditions have always passed down tools for self-examination and debate, because …

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Islamic Studies February 26, 2021

Terror Epidemics

Islamophobia and the Disease Poetics of Empire

Anjuli Fatima Raza Kolb

Hosted by Kristian Petersen
Terrorism is a cancer, an infection, an epidemic, a plague. For more than a century, this metaphor has figured insurgent violence as contagion in order to contain its political energies …
Islamic Studies February 19, 2021

Women and Gender in the Qur'an

Celene Ibrahim

Hosted by Shehnaz Haqqani
In Women and Gender in the Qur’an (Oxford University Press in 2020), Celene Ibrahim explores key themes related to gender in the Qur’an, focusing on women, such as female sexuality …
Islamic Studies February 12, 2021

The Feeling of History

Islam, Romanticism, and Andalusia

Charles Hirschkind

Hosted by SherAli Tareen
Charles Hirschkind’s lyrical and majestic new book The Feeling of History: Islam, Romanticism, and Andalusia (University of Chicago Press, 2020) represents a profound work of retrieval that launches and executes a …
Indian Ocean World February 10, 2021

Miracles and Material Life

Rice, Ore, Traps and Guns in Islamic Malaya

Teren Sevea

Hosted by Kelvin Ng
In Miracles and Material Life: Rice, Ore, Traps and Guns in Islamic Malaya (Cambridge UP, 2020), Teren Sevea reveals the economic, environmental and religious significance of Islamic miracle workers (pawangs) in the …
Islamic Studies February 5, 2021

Ms. Marvel's America

No Normal

Jessica Baldanzi and Hussein Rashid

Hosted by Shobhana Xavier
In their co-edited volume, Ms. Marvel’s America: No Normal (University Press of Mississippi, 2020), Jessica Baldanzi and Hussein Rashid focus on the superhero Ms. Marvel, Kamala Khan. The first Muslim …
Islamic Studies January 29, 2021

Muslim American City

Gender and Religion in Metro Detroit

Alisa Perkins

Hosted by Kristian Petersen
The call to prayer breaks the hustle and bustle of an urban sonic landscape in unique ways. For Muslims living in Hamtramck, Michigan broadcasting the adhān was one way of …
Indian Ocean World January 28, 2021

Imperial Mecca

Ottoman Arabia and the Indian Ocean Hajj

Michael Christo Low

Hosted by Ahmed Almaazmi
With the advent of the steamship, repeated outbreaks of cholera marked oceanic pilgrimages to Mecca as a dangerous form of travel and a vehicle for the globalization of epidemic diseases …
Islamic Studies January 22, 2021

The Golden Calf Between Bible and Qur'an

Scripture, Polemic, and Exegesis from Late Antiquity to Islam

Michael E. Pregill

Hosted by Shehnaz Haqqani
In his exciting and thorough book, The Golden Calf between Bible and Qur'an: Scripture, Polemic, and Exegesis from Late Antiquity to Islam (Oxford, 2020), Michael Pregill explores the biblical and …
Central Asian Studies January 21, 2021

Polymaths of Islam

Power and Networks of Knowledge in Central Asia

James Pickett

Hosted by Nicholas Seay
James Pickett's new book, Polymaths of Islam: Power and Networks of Knowledge in Central Asia (Cornell University Press, 2020) analyzes the social and intellectual power of religious leaders who created a …
Islamic Studies January 15, 2021

The Bruce B. Lawrence Reader

Islam Beyond Borders

Bruce B. Lawrence and Ali Altaf Mian

Hosted by SherAli Tareen
For more than four decades, Bruce Lawrence’s multivalent and fulsomely prolific scholarship has influenced and imprinted the Western study of Islam and Religious Studies more broadly in singularly profound ways …
Islamic Studies January 8, 2021

Say What Your Longing Heart Desires

Women, Prayer and Poetry in Iran

Niloofar Haeri

Hosted by Shobhana Xavier
Say What Your Longing Heart Desires: Women, Prayer & Poetry in Iran (Stanford University Press, 2020) by Niloofar Haeri is a stunning and absorbing ethnography of the lived ritual experiences …
Middle Eastern Studies January 5, 2021

The Lost Archive

Traces of a Caliphate in a Cairo Synagogue

Marina Rustow

Hosted by Nancy Ko
What does it mean that our single greatest source of medieval Islamic government documents comes from the attic of a Jewish synagogue in Cairo? This is the seeming paradox that …
Van Leer Institute Series on Ideas with Renee Garfinkel January 4, 2021

Till We Have Built Jerusalem

Architects of a New City

Adina Hoffman

Hosted by Renee Garfinkel
A remarkable view of one of the world's most beloved and troubled cities, Adina Hoffman's Till We Have Built Jerusalem: Architects of a New City (FSG, 2017) is a gripping …
Islamic Studies December 31, 2020

Muhammad and the Empires of Faith

The Making of the Prophet of Islam

Sean Anthony

Hosted by Kristian Petersen
Contemporary historians have searched for the historical Muhammad along many paths. In Muhammad and the Empires of Faith: The Making of the Prophet of Islam (University of California Press, 2020) …
East Asian Studies December 30, 2020

China's Muslims and Japan's Empire

Centering Islam in World War II

Kelly A. Hammond

Hosted by Ed Pulford
The 1930s-40s expansion of the Japanese empire was marked by significant interest among Japan-based scholars and policy-makers in China’s Muslim population and how best to write them into a new …
Islamic Studies December 24, 2020

The Routledge Handbook of Islam and Gender

Justine Howe

Hosted by Shehnaz Haqqani
The Routledge Handbook of Islam and Gender (Routledge, 2020), edited by Justine Howe, includes an excellent introduction to Islam and gender as well as to the volume and 31 content chapters …
Eastern European Studies December 18, 2020

Remaking Muslim Lives

Everyday Islam in Postwar Bosnia and Herzegovina

David Henig

Hosted by Steven Seegel
The violent disintegration of Yugoslavia and the cultural and economic dispossession caused by the collapse of socialism continue to force Muslims in Bosnia and Herzegovina to reconfigure their religious lives …
Islamic Studies December 18, 2020

The Occupied Clinic

Militarism and Care in Kashmir

Saiba Varma

Hosted by SherAli Tareen
In her majestic and magisterial new book, The Occupied Clinic: Militarism and Care in Kashmir (Duke UP, 2020), Saiba Varma disrupts and upsets the care/violence binary by examining and vividly describing …
Islamic Studies December 11, 2020

Witness to Marvels

Sufism and Literary Imagination

Tony K. Stewart

Hosted by Shobhana Xavier
In Tony K. Stewart’s book, Witness to Marvels: Sufism and Literary Imagination (University of California Press, 2019), we are taken into the imaginal realms of ogres, fairies, Sufi pirs and …