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Islamic Studies
Islamic Studies September 22, 2023

Merchants of Virtue

Hindus, Muslims, and Untouchables in Eighteenth-Century South Asia

Divya Cherian

Hosted by SherAli Tareen
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In her formidable and fiercely well-argued new book Merchants of Virtue: Hindus, Muslims, and Untouchables in Eighteenth-Century South Asia (U California Press, 2023), Divya Cherian shows with meticulous detail and in lyrical …

Islamic Studies

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Interviews with scholars of Islam about their new books.

Intellectual History September 17, 2023

Ibn Sīnā (Avicenna)

A Very Short Introduction

Peter Adamson

Hosted by Morteza Hajizadeh
Peter Adamson's book Ibn Sīnā (Avicenna): a Very Short Introduction (Oxford UP, 2023) provides an introduction to the most important philosopher of the Islamic world, Ibn Sīnā, often known in English …
Islamic Studies September 15, 2023

Bosnian Hajj Literature

Multiple Paths to the Holy

Dženita Karić

Hosted by Shobhana Xavier
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Dženita Karić's new book Bosnian Hajj Literature: Multiple Paths to the Holy (Edinburgh University Press, 2023) maps the diverse understandings of the hajj in relation to Islamic geography by Bosnian …
Indian Ocean World September 9, 2023

The Owl and the Occult

Popular Politics and Social Liminality in Early Modern South Asia

Divya Cherian

Hosted by Ahmed Almaazmi
Today I talked to Divya Cherian about her article "The Owl and the Occult: Popular Politics and Social Liminality in Early Modern South Asia" published in Comparative Studies in Society and History (June …
Islamic Studies September 8, 2023

Colonizing Kashmir

State-building under Indian Occupation

Hafsa Kanjwal

Hosted by SherAli Tareen
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In her scintillating and brilliant new book, Colonizing Kashmir: State-Building Under Indian Occupation (Stanford UP, 2023), Hafsa Kanjwal details and showcases the discursive and institutional means and mechanisms through which …
Islamic Studies September 1, 2023

Wives and Work

Islamic Law and Ethics Before Modernity

Marion Holmes Katz

Hosted by Shehnaz Haqqani
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In this interview, I speak with Marion Holmes Katz about her latest book Wives and Work: Islamic Law and Ethics Before Modernity (Columbia UP, 2022). This fascinating book explores the …
Islamic Studies August 25, 2023

I Cannot Write My Life

Islam, Arabic, and Slavery in Omar Ibn Said's America

Mbaye Lo and Carl W. Ernst

Hosted by SherAli Tareen
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Carl Ernst’s and Mbaye Lo’s new book I Cannot Write My Life: Islam, Arabic, and Slavery in Omar Ibn Said's America (UNC Press, 2023) is a fascinating and rivetting book …
Islamic Studies August 18, 2023

Sufi Women, Embodiment and the 'Self'

Gender in Islamic Ritual

Jamila Rodrigues

Hosted by Shobhana Xavier
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Jamila Rodrigues's new book Sufi Women, Embodiment and the “Self”: Gender in Islamic Ritual (Routledge 2023) uses her dance and performance studies background to study women’s hadra or zikr experiences …
Anthropology August 10, 2023

Subcontractors of Guilt

Holocaust Memory and Muslim Belonging in Postwar Germany

Esra Özyürek

Hosted by Armanc Yildiz
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At the turn of the millennium, Middle Eastern and Muslim Germans had rather unexpectedly become central to the country's Holocaust memory culture—not as welcome participants, but as targets for re-education …
Islamic Studies August 4, 2023

Unruly Women

Race, Neocolonialism, and the Hijab

Falguni A. Sheth

Hosted by Shehnaz Haqqani
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In Unruly Women: Race, Neocolonialism, and the Hijab (Oxford UP, 2022), Falguni Sheth explores the multiple ways that liberalism is understood and exploited, and liberalism’s origin as a project of …
Asian Review of Books August 3, 2023

Angels Tapping at the Wine-Shop's Door

A History of Alcohol in the Islamic World

Rudi Matthee

Hosted by Nicholas Gordon
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When meeting an expatriate friend on my first trip to Dubai, the host at the restaurant where we were meeting quickly ushered me up to the second floor. For foreigners …
Anthropology July 26, 2023

Sexual Self-Fashioning

Iranian Dutch Narratives of Sexuality and Belonging

Rahil Roodsaz

Hosted by Armanc Yildiz
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Sexuality and gender have come to serve as measures for cultural belonging in discussions of the position of Muslim immigrants in multicultural Western societies. While the acceptance of assumed local …
African Studies July 23, 2023

Invoking the Invisible in the Sahara

Islam, Spiritual Mediation, and Social Change

Erin Pettigrew

Hosted by Ahmed Almaazmi
In Invoking the Invisible in the Sahara: Islam, Spiritual Mediation, and Social Change (Cambridge UP, 2023), Erin Pettigrew utilizes invisible forces and entities - esoteric knowledge and spirits - to …
Middle Eastern Studies July 23, 2023

Circumcision and Medicine in Modern Turkey

Oyman Başaran

Hosted by Alize Arıcan
In Turkey, circumcision is viewed as both a religious obligation and a rite of passage for young boys, as communities celebrate the ritual through gatherings, gifts, and special outfits. Yet …
Psychology July 23, 2023

The Muslim, State and Mind

Psychology in Times of Islamophobia

Tarek Younis

Hosted by Catriona Gold
Mental health is positioned as the cure-all for society’s discontents, from pandemics to terrorism. But psychology and psychiatry are not apolitical, and neither are Muslims. This book unpacks where the …
Islamic Studies July 21, 2023

Translating Rumi Into the West

A Linguistic Conundrum and Beyond

Amir Sedaghat

Hosted by Shobhana Xavier
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Amir Artaban Sedaghat’s Translating Rumi into the West: A Linguistic Conundrum and Beyond (Routledge, 2023) engages Rumi, the 13th-century Muslim Persian mystic and a best-selling poet, and the paradoxes of …
Islamic Studies July 10, 2023

Islamicate Occult Sciences in Theory and Practice

Liana Saif, Francesca Leoni, and Matthew Melvin-Koushki

Hosted by Ahmed Almaazmi
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Islamicate Occult Sciences in Theory and Practice (Brill, 2020) brings together the latest research on Islamic occult sciences from a variety of disciplinary perspectives, namely intellectual history, manuscript studies, and …
Religion July 1, 2023

Stereotyping Religion II

Critiquing Clichés

Brad Stoddard and Craig Martin

Hosted by Jacob Barrett
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Building on the success of Stereotyping Religion: Critiquing Clichés, this follow up volume dismantles a further 10 widespread stereotypes and clichés about religion, focusing on clichés that a new generation …
Islamic Studies June 30, 2023

The Brush of Insight

Artists and Agency at the Mughal Court

Yael Rice

Hosted by Kristian Petersen
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Over the course of the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, Mughal court painters evolved from illustrators of manuscripts and albums to active mediators of imperial visionary experience, cultivating their patrons’ …
Critical Theory June 28, 2023

Sufi Deleuze

Secretions of Islamic Atheism

Michael Muhammad Knight

Hosted by Adam Bobeck
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“There is always an atheism to be extracted from a religion,” Deleuze and Guattari write in their final collaboration, What Is Philosophy? Their claim that Christianity “secretes” atheism “more than …