New Books in Islamic Studies

Scholarly and public discourse on Islamic intellectual thought in the modern period tend to frame it narrowly through the concept of “influence” as it emanates from the Middle Eastern “center” to the non-Middle Eastern “peripheries” without paying sufficient attention to the ways in which these variegated “peripheries” retain the autonomy to form their own conceptions of religious identity in relation to themselves and to those “centers.” In his latest work, In a Pure Muslim Land: Shi’ism between Pakistan and the Middle East (University of North Carolina Press, 2019), Simon Wolfgang Fuchs interrogates this framework with a novel intervention by examining the case of Shi’i Islamic intellectual thought in Pakistan as it relates to the Middle East. Beginning his study with pre-colonial India, Simon explores the internal debates that took place within Shi’i scholarly circles in the subcontinent prior to and after the founding of Pakistan to unearth the myriad ways in which they negotiated and contested their place within their social and intellectual milieus as arbiters of their religious tradition on equal footing with Middle Eastern Shi’i scholars and with their Sunni counterparts in South Asia. Through rigorous research conducted in libraries across the Middle East and South Asia, Simon re-centers the importance of theological ideas – as elaborated in doctrinal texts, journal publications, and speeches – as a necessary complement to material interests in the formation of religious and sectarian identity in modern Islamic thought. He further demonstrates how Pakistani Shi’i intellectuals were not passive recipients of concepts from the Shi’i centers of Iraq and Iran, but active participants in the process of evaluating the usefulness of those ideas, working to re-appropriate or repackage them for their own local circumstances. Pakistani Shi’i scholars thus “indigenized” watershed events like the Iranian Revolution but also retained their own autonomy as actors with full agency to determine to what extent Iranian notions of authority and hierarchy ought be emulated. This work cuts across the fields of Middle East Studies, South Asia Studies, and Islamic Studies, and creates avenues for further research in the history of transnational and transregional Islamic thought by challenging the conventional “center-periphery” binary between the Middle East and South Asia and by drawing our attention to the importance of the bidirectional flow of ideas between those regions. Asad Dandia is a graduate student of Islamic Studies at Columbia University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/islamic-studies

Since the fall of the Indonesian New Order regime in 1998 there has been a steady rise of Islamic popular culture in the nation. Muslim consumers and producers have cultivated a mediated domain where they can encounter commercial entertainment though the prism of spiritual reflection and piety. In Gender and Islam in Indonesian Cinema (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), Alicia Izharuddin, Women's Studies in Religion Program Research Associate at Harvard Divinity School, explores the development of the Islamic film genre with a specific focus on gender representation. Indonesian cinema throughout the New Order era focused on Muslim characters, both men and women, frequently framing them in nationalistic ideals. But after the record success of 2008’s film, Ayat-Ayat Cinta (Verses of Love), the viewing preferences of Indonesian Muslim audiences were met with a slew of Islamically themed films. These often contained the repetition of formulaic tropes and symbols deemed Islamic in order to sell out the box office. In our conversation we discussed the characteristics of the film Islami genre, the importance of gender analysis and feminist methodologies, the role of women as actors and filmmakers, idealized masculinities, the public piety of celebrity actresses, producing a “Good Muslim”/ “Bad Muslim” narrative dichotomy, films about the famous Wali Songo saints, and mediated public Islamic values in contemporary Indonesia. Kristian Petersen is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy & Religious Studies at Old Dominion University. He is the author of Interpreting Islam in China: Pilgrimage, Scripture, and Language in the Han Kitab (Oxford University Press, 2017). He is currently working on a monograph entitled The Cinematic Lives of Muslims, and is the editor of the forthcoming volumes Muslims in the Movies: A Global Anthology (ILEX Foundation) and New Approaches to Islam in Film (Routledge). You can find out more about his work on his website, follow him on Twitter @BabaKristian, or email him at [email protected]. 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 the absence of any real certainty about the nature and intention of the early sources that tell us the story of the early Islamic period, how can we use them? What sort of methodological approaches may we deploy to elucidate the meanings of texts, often similar in their core elements, but with divergent perspectives and intentions that cut across a range of genres? In The Rebel and the Imam in Early Islam (Cambridge University Press, 2019), Professor Najam Haider, Associate Professor in the Department of Religion at Barnard, follows his two earlier books on Shi'ism with an exploration of the link between early Islamic historical writing and Late Antique and Classic Rhetoric. Najam seeks not to supplant positivist approaches to history with his new methodology, but rather to ask new kinds of questions relating to intention, meaning, and community. Aaron Hagler is an assistant professor of history at Troy University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/islamic-studies

As you may know, university presses publish a lot of good books. In fact, they publish thousands of them every year. They are different from most trade books in that most of them are what you might called "fundamental research." Their authors--dedicated researchers one and all--provide the scholarly stuff upon which many non-fiction trade books are based. So when you are reading, say, a popular history, you are often reading UP books at one remove. Of course, some UP books are also bestsellers, and they are all well written (and, I should say, thoroughly vetted thanks to the peer review system), but the greatest contribution of UPs is to provide a base of fundamental research to the public. And they do a great job of it. How do they do it? Today I talked to Kathryn Conrad, the president of the Association of University Presses, about the work of UPs, the challenges they face, and some terrific new directions they are going. We also talked about why, if you have a scholarly book in progress, you should talk to UP editors early and often. And she explains how! Listen in. Marshall Poe is the editor of the New Books Network. He can be reached at [email protected]. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/islamic-studies

Much has been written about the Crusades, the religiously-inspired wars that pockmarked the later centuries of the Middle Ages. Yet for all of the many books on the subject there has been surprisingly little focus on the men and the women who were entangled in these conflicts. In his book Crusaders: The Epic History of the Wars for the Holy Lands (Viking, 2019), Dan Jones addresses this by detailing the role of key individuals played in these events. By drawing from a variety of perspectives, he shows how the Crusades was a different event depending upon one’s perspective, be that of a Norman ruler, a Byzantine princess, or a Muslim chronicler. Moreover, by expensing the scope of coverage beyond such traditional figures to include people such as the Norwegian king Sigurd I, Jones demonstrates the wide impact of the wars and the ways in which they drew in people from throughout Europe. From their stories, Jones shows how the purpose of the Crusades changed over time, as they reflected more the motivations of the individuals involved rather than the goals traditionally associated with them. 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 things that make people academics -- as deep fascination with some arcane subject, often bordering on obsession, and a comfort with the solitude that developing expertise requires -- do not necessarily make us good teachers. Jessamyn Neuhaus’s Geeky Pedagogy: A Guide for Intellectuals, Introverts, and Nerds Who Want to Be Effective Teachers (West Virginia University Press, 2019) helps us to identify and embrace that geekiness in us and then offers practical, step-by-step guidelines for how to turn it to effective pedagogy. It’s a sharp, slim, and entertaining volume that can make better teachers of us all. Stephen Pimpare is Senior Lecturer in the Politics & Society Program and Faculty Fellow at the Carsey School of Public Policy at the University of New Hampshire. He is the author of The New Victorians (New Press, 2004), A Peoples History of Poverty in America (New Press, 2008), winner of the Michael Harrington Award, and Ghettos, Tramps and Welfare Queens: Down and Out on the Silver Screen (Oxford, 2017). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/islamic-studies

“Moderation in times of extremism is a revolutionary idea. It is a positive, courageous value, as opposed to a defeatist attitude. It is swimming against the tide, rather than following the crowd on a path obviously leading to the abyss. We need to create our own vision rather than just copy the vision of others.” -Professor Mohammed Dajani Daoudi In a time when Islam is increasingly identified by violent extremism and hostility towards Christians and Jews, Professor Mohammed Dajani Daoudi and his colleagues advocate for an Islam that is true to its Koranic foundations, which call for coexistence and cooperation with other religions. Daoudi took a group of Palestinian students to visit Auschwitz – a courageous assertion against the Holocaust denial rampant in Palestinian society, and an effort toward cultivating empathy. Daoudi paid a harsh price for the peaceful journey: he lost his job at Al Quds University in East Jerusalem as head of the libraries and director of the American Studies Institute, his car was torched, and his life was threatened multiple times. Nevertheless, with his peace-affirming work on behalf of empathy and reconciliation, he – along with others - continues to promote an alternative to the destructive forces of anti-normalization, pro-boycott and violence in the Palestinian community…and beyond. Today I talked to Daoudi about his book, co-edited with Prof. Munther S. Dajani Daoudi, Prof. Martin Leiner, Dr. Zeina M. Barakat, Teaching Empathy and Reconciliation In Midst Of Conflict (Wasatia Press, 2016). Renee Garfinkel is a Jerusalem-based psychologist, writer, and Middle East commentator for the nationally syndicated TV program, The Armstrong Williams Show.. Write her at [email protected] or tweet @embracingwisdom. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/islamic-studies

Few doctrinal and political issues are more controversial in Pakistan today than that of blasphemy. In her excellent and engaging new book Shariʿa and the State in Pakistan: Blasphemy Politics (Routledge, 2019), Farhat Haq presents the history and present of blasphemy laws, debates, and politics in Pakistan, in a manner that carefully weaves the historical backdrop of blasphemy politics with detailed descriptions of important discursive moments and contributions involving a range of different state and non-state actors. Equally conversant with Islamic Studies, South Asian Studies, and Political Science, this book will speak to and interest multiple audiences, while familiarizing readers in eminently accessible prose with the legal, political, and theological complexities invested in the question of blasphemy in Pakistan and beyond. Throughout the book, Haq convincingly shows and argues that blasphemy politics in Pakistan escapes any neat narratives or conceptual framings, and one must attend to its contingencies in order to develop a more nuanced understanding of its thorniest implications and consequences. This book is a must-read for anyone interested in the hugely critical and controversial topic of blasphemy in Islam and in Pakistan. SherAli Tareen is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Franklin and Marshall College. His research focuses on Muslim intellectual traditions and debates in early modern and modern South Asia. His academic publications are available here. He can be reached at [email protected]. Listener feedback is most welcome. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/islamic-studies

Building on nearly two decades of scholarship about sectarianism and communal relations in the Modern Middle East, Ussama Makdisi’s latest book, Age of Coexistence: The Ecumenical Frame and the Making of the Modern Arab World(University of California Press, 2019) dispels the myth that the Middle East is inherently or inescapably sectarian and complicates the often overstated binary of “secular” and religious. Makdisi proposes a new paradigm for understanding the myriad visions of anti-sectarianism and pluralism in the region, which he calls “the ecumenical frame.” This capacious “ecumenical frame” includes political leaders and activists, intellectual elites, and ordinary people who worked – and still work – toward peaceful coexistence with their neighbors. Forged in the crucible of 19th century violence and political reform, this desire to reconcile the promises of unity and equal citizenship with the remarkable diversity of the Arab world has withstood war, colonialism, and authoritarian rule. Age of Coexistence offers a provocative engagement with existing literature on sectarianism, secularism, colonialism, and Arab nationalism in a way that is also accessible to a wider, non-scholarly audience. Ussama Makdisi is a Professor of History and the Arab-American Educational Foundation Chair of Arab Studies at Rice University and a visiting professor at the University of California Berkeley. He is the author of a number of groundbreaking studies on the history of religion and politics in the Modern Middle East, including The Culture of Sectarianism: Community, History, and Violence in Nineteenth-Century Ottoman Lebanon (University of California Press, 2000), Artillery of Heaven: American Missionaries and the Failed Conversion of the Middle East (Cornell University Press, 2008), and Faith Misplaced: The Broken Promise of U.S.-Arab Relations, 1820-2001 (Public Affairs Books, 2010). Joshua Donovan is a PhD candidate at Columbia University’s Department of History. His dissertation examines competing conceptions of identity and subjectivity within the Greek Orthodox Christian community in Syria, Lebanon, and the diaspora. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/islamic-studies

Ather Zia’s Resisting Disappearance: Military Occupation and Women’s Activism (University of Washington Press, 2019) is a brilliant, bold, and urgent ethnography centered on Kashmiri women of the APDP (Association of the Parents of the Disappeared Persons). By combining meticulous historical analysis, ethnographic intimacy, and profound attention to the aspirations and tragedies of everyday life, Zia documents the discursive mechanisms and affective registers through which women of the APDP deploy and enact mourning as a politics of resisting the settler colonial regime of India in Indian Occupied Kashmir, especially its ghastly enforced disappearance of over 10,000 Kashmiris. Lyrically written, this book details and navigates the fascinating as well as courageous strategies of resistance mobilized by members of the APDP, while also sketching a vivid and at many times harrowing picture of Indian state brutalities and conditions of colonial rule that Kashmiris, including women of the APDP, must constantly contend and negotiate. The strength of this book lies in the way it moves seamlessly between crafting intimate individual portraits of resistance, and describing the broader terrain of colonial occupation that informs, shapes, and limits the arc and practice of resistance. In our conversation, we touched on a range of themes including “affective law” and its challenge to modern state sovereignty, gendered choreographies of resistance, military humanitarianism and its insidious operations, archive fever and the politics of mourning, and the interaction of poetry and ethnography. This theoretically sophisticated and politically powerful book marks a groundbreaking moment in the anthropological study of Kashmir and South Asia that will also make an excellent text in undergraduate and graduate seminar on various themes and topics. SherAli Tareen is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Franklin and Marshall College. His research focuses on Muslim intellectual traditions and debates in early modern and modern South Asia. His academic publications are available here. He can be reached at [email protected]. Listener feedback is most welcome. 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 new book, Revolution and its Discontents, Political Thought and Reform in Iran (Cambridge University Press, 2019), Eskandar Sadeghi-Boroujerdi’s (of Goldsmiths University of London) studies the rise and evolution of reformist political thought in Iran and analyses the complex network of publications, study circles, and think tanks that encompassed a range of prominent politicians and intellectuals in the 1990s. The book maps maps and analyses a wide filed of political and ideological issues that are keys to understanding Iran’s revolutionary state. Among others, they include the ruling political theology of the ‘Guardianship of the Jurist’, the political elite’s engagement with questions of Islamic statehood, democracy, and constitutionalism, and their critiques of revolutionary agency and social transformation. Yaacov Yadgar is the Stanley Lewis Professor of Israel Studies at the University of Oxford. His most recent book is Sovereign Jews: Israel, Zionism and Judaism (SUNY Press, 2017). You can read more of Yadgar’s work here. 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 enterprise of journalism is in crisis. Today’s journalists face accusations of “fake news” on the one hand, and harassment, arrest, and even the murder of reporters on the other. At the same time, we who rely on journalists for information, are constantly bombarded by breaking news. Confronted by video and print updates in real time, it is increasingly challenging to keep up with, let alone understand, world events. Barrels of information continually roll towards us; how can we find the time and space to stop and consider – to digest the content of news and to reflect on what it all means? Seen through the whirlwind of information, the world in general, and the Middle East in particular, can appear more confusing and chaotic than ever. Enter Seth Frantzman. His new book After Isis: America, Iran and the Struggle for the Middle East (Gefen House Publishing, 2019) is just what is needed to help deal with the news confusion. The brutal Syrian civil war and the war against Isis left hundreds of thousands dead, and made millions more refugees. Frantzman spent months traveling throughout the Middle East to get a first-hand view of the region, its people and politics in war’s aftermath. He shares his insights and understanding in this important work. 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 "Arab Spring" shook the world in 2011, revealing profound dissatisfaction throughout the Middle East and North Africa, as people throughout the region took to the streets demanding dramatic political change. The uprisings have been analyzed by scholars, journalists, and other observers of the region from many angles, but the ideas of the revolution have received comparatively less attention. In her pathbreaking book, Enlightenment on the Eve of Revolution: The Egyptian and Syrian Debates (Columbia University Press, 2019), Elizabeth S. Kassab shows her readers that the demands for human dignity, freedom, and political participation had been robustly discussed by intellectuals in Syria and Egypt during the 1990s and 2000s. She examines how debates about tanwir, or “enlightenment” in English, unfolded under the thumb of powerful, omnipresent states. By exploring the rich intellectual and cultural contexts of these tanwir debates, Kassab firmly and persuasively rebuts the notion that calls for democratic reforms in the Arab world can be reduced to western mimicry. Instead, she argues that tanwiris were in tune with a public that had grown increasingly dissatisfied with the status quo. Sadly, the same crucible that spurred calls for a renewal of civil society and political participation in Egypt and Syria has made achieving those goals extremely difficult. Enlightenment on the Eve of Revolution is a timely account of an ongoing struggle for freedom and justice in the Middle East and an invaluable contribution to a growing literature on Arab intellectual history. Dr. Elizabeth Suzanne Kassab is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies in Qatar, where she also heads the philosophy program. In addition to her teaching, Dr. Kassab has written extensively about Arab Intellectual History, including her previous book,Contemporary Arab Thought: Cultural Critique in Comparative Perspective. Joshua Donovan is a PhD candidate at Columbia University's Department of History. His dissertation examines national and sectarian identity formation within the Greek Orthodox Christian community in Syria, Lebanon, and the diaspora. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/islamic-studies

Sometimes it seems that there’s nothing left to say about mass violence in the 20th century. But the new edited volume Let Them Not Return: Sayfo – The Genocide Against the Assyrian, Syriac, and Chaldean Christians in the Ottoman Empire (Berghahn Books, 2017), draws our attention to a conflict that even most scholars know little about—the persecution and killing of Assyrian, Syriac and Chaldean Christians during and after the First World War. In the book, editors David Gaunt, Naures Atto, Soner O. Barthoma, provide a broad range of perspectives. With so little known about the violence, they provide historical perspectives on the long-term origins, analyses of individual and corporate responses, and reflections on the long term memory and impact of the conflict. The book functions in some ways like an invitation—an invitation to learn something about peoples and suffering about which we know little, an invitation to consider how this violence should reshape how we think about the region during the first quarter of the 20th century, and an invitation to explore further what happened to the peoples at the heart of the book. Hopefully academics and others will take the invitation up. Kelly McFall is Professor of History and Director of the Honors Program at Newman University. He’s the author of four modules in the Reacting to the Past series, including The Needs of Others: Human Rights, International Organizations and Intervention in Rwanda, 1994, published by W. W. Norton Press. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/islamic-studies

Why was a Crusade that was initially meant for Syria end up in Tunis? How did the aspirations of the King of France and the Mamluk Sultan, the King of Sicily and the Hafsid Emir of Tunis, get entangled in the years following the Mongol invasion of the Middle East? More broadly, how should we approach the Crusades, a series of events that have traditionally focused on either the European or the Near Eastern perspectives, and can these perspectives become integrated into a more wholistic, Mediterranean approach? In The Tunis Crusade of 1270: a Mediterranean History (Oxford University Press, 2018), Dr. Michael Lower, professor of History at the University of Minnesota, offers a broad and deep dive into the Tunis Crusade, an unlikely but impactful moment of Mediterranean History. In our conversation, Michael and I touch upon traditional and new methodological approaches to the Crusades, the important roles played by Mediterranean rulers and the political, religious, and economic pressures that shaped their decisions, and the reasons behind the strange detour the so-called eighth Crusade, originally bound for Syria, took 1500 miles to the West, to Tunis. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/islamic-studies

Robert Haug’s new book, The Eastern Frontier: Limits of Empire in Late Antique and Early Medieval Central Asia (I. B. Tauris, 2019) is an in-depth look at the frontier zone of the Sassanian, Umayyad, and Abbasid Empires. Employing an impressive array of literary, archaeological, and numismatic sources, combined with a solid theoretical foundation, Haug demonstrates the distinct challenges the border region of the empire posed to these imperial powers, but also tracks the emergence and maintenance of unique regional identities and political trends on this frontier. This is essential reading for scholars and enthusiasts of Islamic, Iranian, and Central Asian History, as well as those with an interest in the study of frontiers and border regions. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/islamic-studies

Zaytuna just wants to be left alone to her ascetic practices and nurse her dark view of the world. But when an impoverished servant girl she barely knows comes and begs her to bring some justice to the death of a local boy, she is forced to face the suffering of the most vulnerable in Baghdad and the emotional and mystical legacy of her mother, a famed ecstatic whose love for God eclipsed everything. The Lover (Kindle Direct Publishers, 2019) is a historically sensitive mystery that introduces us to the world of medieval Baghdad and the lives of the great Sufi mystics, washerwomen, Hadith scholars, tavern owners, slaves, corpsewashers, police, and children indentured to serve in the homes of the wealthy. It asks what it means to have family when you have nearly no one left, what it takes to love and be loved by those who have stuck by you, and how one can come to love God and everything He’s done to you. In our conversation Laury Silvers discusses her transition from writing scholarship to historical fiction, how her research equipped her to give life to 10th century Baghdad in her narrative, the primary and secondary sources that informed her novel, what daily life of diverse social classes would have looked like at that moment, early pious and mystic women, sufi training and practice, questions of race and colorism, and the complex environment women had to navigate in medieval Baghdad. She even gives us a preview of the second book in this series, called The Jealous. Kristian Petersen is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy & Religious Studies at Old Dominion University. He is the author of Interpreting Islam in China: Pilgrimage, Scripture, and Language in the Han Kitab (Oxford University Press, 2017). He is currently working on a monograph entitled The Cinematic Lives of Muslims, and is the editor of the forthcoming volumes Muslims in the Movies: A Global Anthology (ILEX Foundation) and New Approaches to Islam in Film(Routledge). You can find out more about his work on his website, follow him on Twitter @BabaKristian, or email him at [email protected]. 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 past decade has seen a tremendous production of scholarship on American missionary endeavors in the Middle East. In Faithful Encounters: Authorities and American Missionaries in the Ottoman Empire (McGill-Queens University Press, 2018), Emrah Şahin approaches this dynamic field of inquiry from a less-common perspective, that of the Ottoman Empire. Relying on largely untapped official imperial sources emanating from the Sublime Porte, Şahin recounts complaints from local authorities and fraught diplomatic considerations, which Ottoman sultans, ministers, and bureaucrats were forced to grapple with as they sought to maintain control of their Empire. Weaving together compelling stories from Ottoman records, the book describes the Sublime Porte’s efforts to regulate physical space, censor missionary publications, and monitor missionary activities. With engaging anecdotes, Faithful Encounters offers a more complex look at Muslim-Christian relations and America’s engagement with the Ottomans. Emrah Şahin is the director of the Turkish Studies Program at the University of Florida and a lecturer at their Center for European Studies. He earned his PhD in History from McGill University in Canada. Joshua Donovan is a PhD candidate at Columbia University’s Department of History. His dissertation examines national and sectarian identity formation within the Greek Orthodox Christian community in Syria, Lebanon, and the diaspora. 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 History of the Tajiks: Iranians of the East(I.B. Tauris, 2019), Richard Foltz provides a comprehensive cultural, political, and linguistic history of the Tajik people. Throughout the book, he traces the history of this Persian-speaking Iranian ethnic group, starting with the pre-historic groups who first settled in the regions of contemporary Tajikistan, Afghanistan, and Uzbekistan, and ending in the present day. Inspired by the work and career of Richard N. Frye, Foltz puts forward a clear argument about the place of the Tajiks in the broader Persianate world. Suitable for both academic and broader audiences, this book is a must-read for anyone interested in the history of the Tajik-populated regions of Central Asia, or for those seeking a broader understanding of the long durée of Persianate 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

In his new book, The Deepest Border: The Strait of Gibraltar and the Making of the Hispano-African Border(Stanford, 2019), Sasha D. Pack considers the Strait of Gibraltar as an untamed in-between space—from “shatter zone” to borderland. Far from the centers of authority of contending empires, the North African and Southern Iberian coast was a place where imperial, colonial, private, and piratical agents competed for local advantage. Sometimes they outmaneuvered each other; sometimes they cooperated. Gibraltar entered European politics in the Middle Ages, and became a symbol of the Atlantic Empire in the Early Modern period (the Pillars of Hercules of Emperor Charles V are featured on the Spanish flag to this day), but Pack’s study focuses on the nineteenth century. Europe’s new imperialism, Britannic naval supremacy, the age of steam, the ever-present danger of cholera, all mark the change of a Spanish-Moorish border into a multilateral one. So too does the multicultural mix of Europeans and North Africans, Muslims, Jews, Catholics, and Protestants who brought a spirit of convivencia (mutual toleration) into the region, unlike the nineteenth- and twentieth- century homogenizing nationalism that was at play elsewhere. In the middle of this theater, Dr. Pack follows the careers of adventuresome entrepreneurs, who manipulated the weak enforcement of conflicting laws in overlapping jurisdictions for their own gain. He calls these characters “slipstream potentates” because they maneuvered creatively in the wakes of great ships of state on their courses in the seas of international politics. (Other historians have called them “the last Barbary pirates.”) They bring color and detail to this already gripping narrative of international politics in Spain and North Africa in the century between Napoleon and Franco. Sasha D. Pack is Associate Professor of History at the University of Buffalo. He studies Modern Europe, Spain and Portugal, and the Mediterranean, focusing on transnational and political history. Krzysztof Odyniec is a historian of the Early Modern Spanish Empire specializing in culture, diplomacy, and travel. He completed his PhD in 2017 at UC Berkeley where he is now a Visiting Scholar and a Fellow in the Berkeley Connect in History program. 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 social history of Turkey across the twentieth century has produced a tension between state governance and religion. This history informs and shapes modern subjects as they try to live out an authentic vision of the present. In Muslim Civil Society and the Politics of Religious Freedom in Turkey (Oxford University Press, 2017), Jeremy F. Walton, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity, explores how members of three contemporary Muslim groups, the Nur community, the Gülen movement, and Alevis, articulate religiosity within the Turkish public sphere. His rich ethnographic account takes the reader through Istanbul and Ankara to see how Islam is negotiated through religious classes, public conferences, charitable services, museum spaces, and the recollection of history. In our conversation we discuss twentieth century Turkish history, Muslim non-governmental organizations, religious gatherings, museum exhibits, Rumi, the Turkish state’s relationship to Islam and secularism, interreligious tolerance and pluralism, nostalgia for Ottoman heritage, the ideal of “religious freedom,” and the recent shift in political and religious practices. Kristian Petersen is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy & Religious Studies at Old Dominion University. He is the author of Interpreting Islam in China: Pilgrimage, Scripture, and Language in the Han Kitab (Oxford University Press, 2017). He is currently working on a monograph entitled The Cinematic Lives of Muslims, and is the editor of the forthcoming volumes Muslims in the Movies: A Global Anthology (ILEX Foundation) and New Approaches to Islam in Film (Routledge). You can find out more about his work on his website, follow him on Twitter @BabaKristian, or email him at [email protected]. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/islamic-studies

Botakoz Kassymbekova’s Despite Cultures: Early Soviet Rule in Tajikistan (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2016) is a terrific study of early Soviet rule in Tajikistan based on extensive archival research. Her work explores technologies of governance used in early Soviet Tajikistan in order to implement Soviet plans for industrialization and collectivization. The study highlights the importance of individual leaders who used such technologies to try and adhere to the commands coming from the Politburo. This is essential reading for anyone interested in how the early Soviet government sought to overcome ethnic, linguistic, and cultural diversity across a vast space. In a field often bogged down with unsatisfying comparisons to Western-style colonialism, Kassymbekova’s work shows new directions that historians of Central Asia and the Soviet Union can take in order to problematize the application of terms such as “empire,” “imperialism,” and “colonialism” in the Soviet context. She shows that the nature of rule in the Soviet Tajikistan, as elsewhere in the Soviet Union was ever-changing and often could not be easily defined purely by these theoretical concepts. Nicholas Seay is a PhD candidate at The Ohio State University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/islamic-studies

Joseph Hill's new book Wrapping Authority: Women Islamic Leaders in a Sufi Movement in Dakar, Senegal (University of Toronto Press, 2018), is an ethnographic study of women Sufi leaders in the Taalibe Baay or Fayda branch of the Tijaniyya. Hill provides life stories of various fascinating and powerful female muqaddamas (or Sufi leaders) in Dakar and explores how they navigate the complexity of their gendered authority in religious, familial, and public domains. The book examines the ambiguity of female religious leadership and its manifestation through piety and performance, be it through cooking, motherhood, and/or the use of a female voice. Hill frames these pious actions through the semiotic acts of “wrapping” (as opposed to “veiling”), as it provides a more expansive analytical framework for his project. The book will be of interest to those who work on gender and women in Islam, as well as those who engage contemporary Sufism, West African Islam, and anthropology of Islam. Shobhana Xavier is an Assistant Professor of Religion at Queen’s University. Her research areas are on contemporary Sufism in North America and South Asia. She is the author of Sacred Spaces and Transnational Networks in American Sufism (Bloombsury Press, 2018) and a co-author of Contemporary Sufism: Piety, Politics, and Popular Culture (Routledge, 2017). More details about her research and scholarship may be found here and here. She may be reached at [email protected] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/islamic-studies

How distinct is Indian devotionalism from other strands of Indian religiosity? Is devotionalism necessarily at odds with asceticism in the Hindu world? What about the common contrasting of Hindu devotionalism as ‘religion’ with tantra as ‘black magic’? Patton E. Burchett's new book A Genealogy of Devotion: Bhakti, Tantra, Yoga, and Sufism in North India (Columbia University Press, 2019) re-examines what we assume about the rise of devotionalism in North India, tracing its flowering since India’s early medieval “Tantric Age” to present day. It illumines the complex historical factors at play in Sultanate and Mughal India implicating the influence of three pervasive strands in the tapestry of North Indian religiosity: tantra, yoga and Sufism. Burchett shows the extent to which Persian culture and popular Sufism contribute to a (now prevalent) Hindu devotionalism that is critical of tantric and yogic religiosity. Prior to this, argues Burchett, Hindu devotionalism locally flowered in fruitful cross pollination with yogic and tantric forms of Indian religiosity. For information about your host Raj Balkaran’s background, see rajbalkaran.com/academia Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/islamic-studies

Discussions of Middle East politics will inevitably bring Islamism to the table and with it, questions of how Islam in its current iterations came to be. In most cases, the Islamic revival is emphasized as a major turning point in 20th-century Islam. In the case of Egypt, there’s even more prescribed significance to the revival, with Egypt's booming population, but also its perceived centrality in both the region and in the Muslim world. In Practicing Islam in Egypt: Print Media and Islamic Revival(Cambridge University Press, 2019), Aaron Rock-Singer focuses on three principal characters to tell us the story of the Islamic revival: Salafis, the Muslim Brothers, and state institutions. Combining press sources and oral history, Rock-Singer looks at how non-state actors organized amongst themselves and how the state reacted to them. Thematically, he looks at how all three –the Salafis, the Muslims Brothers, and the Egyptian state– engaged in questions of education, prayer, and gender. In turn, they shaped the Islamic revival in Egypt, with major implications not only for Egypt, but for the global Muslim community. Aaron Rock-Singer is a social and intellectual historian of the Modern Middle East and Islam. He received his B.A from the University of Pennsylvania (2007), his M.Phil from St. Antony’s College, Oxford (2010) and his Ph.D from Princeton’s Department of Near Eastern Studies (2016). Following a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Pennsylvania's Perry World House, he joined Cornell's Department of Near Eastern Studies as a Visiting Assistant Professor. In the Fall of 2019, he will begin a tenure track position in Middle Eastern History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Nadirah Mansour is a graduate student at Princeton University’s Department of Near Eastern Studies working on the global intellectual history of the Arabic-language press. She tweets @NAMansour26 and produces another Middle-East and North Africa-related podcast: Reintroducing. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/islamic-studies

How do peripheral places assert the centrality of their identity? Why are fanciful events, like dreams and myths, useful narrative elements for identity construction and arguments about authority, legitimacy, and rhetoric? In Authority and Identity in Medieval Islamic Historiography: Persian Histories from the Periphery (Cambridge University Press, 2017), Mimi Hanaoka, Associate Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Richmond, offers a broad and deep dive into the importance of events that never happened to Persianate locales seeking to center themselves within the Islamic world and the Islamic story. In our conversation, Mimi and I touch upon the appearance and nature of local histories, the important role of fiction and fantasy in constructing local identity, and a few of the more interesting stories she encountered in her research. Aaron Hagler is an assistant professor of history at Troy University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/islamic-studies

Religion and empire are often intertwined. Regarding Muslims there are well known dynasties like the Umayyad, the Abbasid, the Fatimid, the Ottoman, and many others. But the empire governing the largest Muslim population was, of course, the British. In Imperial Muslims: Islam, Community and Authority in the Indian Ocean, 1839-1937 (Edinburgh University Press, 2017), Scott S. Reese, Professor at Northern Arizona University, explores the social effects of the British empire, and its attending conditions, on Muslims in the port city of Aden. In the the late 19th/ and early 20th centuries Aden was undergoing tremendous change, which was fostered by its valuable position within the empire. Muslims from both ends of the empire were making Aden their home. The diversity of the community and technological innovations shaped the everyday lives of Muslims. Reese explores Aden’s sacred landscape by investigating how space was produced and organized. He demonstrates how unseen entities affected the activities that these spaces elicited. Questions of authority emerge through an exploration of local Islamic legal discourse, where authority was regularly asserted and contested across differing Muslim groups. The boundaries of religious practice were also being pushed through the practice of spirit possession. He also tackles the tensions between the local and the global when the Muslims of Aden reflect on transnational scripturalist or sufi movements. In our conversation we discuss how local religious actors were shaped by broader Islamic trends, emerging print technologies, maritime flows, law and adjudication, the role of mosques and cemeteries, Salafism, and popular religious practices, Kristian Petersen is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy & Religious Studies at Old Dominion University. He is the author of Interpreting Islam in China: Pilgrimage, Scripture, and Language in the Han Kitab (Oxford University Press, 2017). He is currently working on a monograph entitled The Cinematic Lives of Muslims, and is the editor of the forthcoming volumes Muslims in the Movies: A Global Anthology (ILEX Foundation) and New Approaches to Islam in Film(Routledge). You can find out more about his work on his website, follow him on Twitter @BabaKristian, or email him at [email protected]. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/islamic-studies

Muhammad Qasim Zaman’s Islam in Pakistan: A History(Princeton University Press, 2018) is a landmark publication in the fields of Religious Studies, modern Islam, South Asian Islam, and by far the most important and monumental contribution to date in the study of Islam in Pakistan. This book takes the reader on an intellectual roller-coaster, that through mesmerizingly layered archival work, makes visible for the first time in the Euro-American academy the religious thought of a number of previously unknown yet extremely important actors, while thoroughly complicating conventional wisdom about a number of familiar religious and political actors. As has been the hallmark of Zaman’s previous scholarship that traverses early, medieval, and modern Islam, the main strength of Islam in Pakistan also lies in the way it seamlessly moves between the close and unexpected analyses of complex religious texts and the careful historicizing of the significance and ambiguities invested in those texts and in the careers of their authors. In this book Zaman presents a detailed account of the ambiguities surrounding the relationship between multiple claimants to Islam in Pakistan. The chapters in this book examine a range of critical themes including the career and ethical commitments of modernism in Pakistan, ‘ulama’-state relations, shifting views on religious minorities, the complicated place of Sufism’s religious history, and the nuances involved in understanding jihad and militancy in Pakistan. This lucidly written book is a must-read for all students and scholars of Islam; it will also make a great text for advanced undergraduate and graduate seminars on modern Islam, South Asian Islam, and South Asian Religions. SherAli Tareen is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Franklin and Marshall College. His research focuses on Muslim intellectual traditions and debates in early modern and modern South Asia. His academic publications are available here. He can be reached at [email protected]. Listener feedback is most welcome. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/islamic-studies

Since 2011, civil wars and state failure have wracked the Arab world, underlying the misalignment between national identity and political borders. In Break all the Borders: Separatism and the Resshaping of the Middle East (Oxford UP, 2019), Ariel I. Ahram examines the separatist movements that aimed to remake those borders and create new independent states. With detailed studies of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, the federalists in eastern Libya, the southern resistance in Yemen, and Kurdish nationalist parties, Ahram explains how separatists captured territory and handled the tasks of rebel governance, including managing oil exports, electricity grids, and irrigation networks. Ahram emphasizes that the separatism arose not just as an opportunistic response to state collapse. Rather, separatists drew inspiration from the legacy of Woodrow Wilson and ideal of self-determination. They sought to reinstate political autonomy that had been lost during the early and mid-twentieth century. Speaking to the international community, separatist promised a more just and stable world order. In Yemen, Syria, Iraq, and Libya, they served as key allies against radical Islamic groups. Yet their hopes for international recognition have gone unfulfilled. Separatism is symptomatic of the contradictions in sovereignty and statehood in the Arab world. Finding ways to integrate, instead of eliminate, separatist movements may be critical for rebuilding regional order. 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 recent years, the concept of a ‘Cold War’ has been revived to describe the rivalry between Saudi Arabia and Iran, the two most influential states occupying positions of geopolitical importance in the Persian Gulf, who lay claim to leadership over the Islamic world. In the years after the 1979 revolution in Iran, the two states became embroiled in a rivalry that risked consuming the region, dividing it along religious lines. Although latent for a good number of years, the rivalry has erupted in Iraq, Lebanon, Bahrain, Syria and Yemen, since the Second Gulf War. With devastating consequences in the region as a whole. As a consequence of its escalation, a number of scholars have begun to explore this increasingly fractious rivalry. The latest piece of work has been undertaken by the prolific Indian émigré journalist Dilip Hiro, a long-time expert on Near & Middle East politics and the author of a large number of books and opinion pieces on the topic, among others. In Cold War in the Islamic World: Saudi Arabia, Iran and the Struggle for Supremacy (Oxford University Press, 2018), Hiro offers an analysis of the cold war between Saudi Arabia and Iran, exploring their interaction since the turn of the twentieth century. Spread across sixteen chapters. If one is looking for a well-written and convincing narrative of the rivalry, that demonstrates a solid awareness of history, then Hiro’s book is for you. Charles Coutinho has a doctorate in history from New York University. Where he studied with Tony Judt, Stewart Stehlin and McGeorge Bundy. His Ph. D. dissertation was on Anglo-American relations in the run-up to the Suez Crisis of 1956. His area of specialization is 19th and 20th-century European, American diplomatic and political history. He has written recently for the Journal of Intelligence History and Chatham House’s International Affairs. It you have a recent title to suggest for a podcast, please send an e-mail to [email protected]. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/islamic-studies

Islam in American has been profoundly shaped by the Black Muslim experience. However, Black Muslims are often marginalized both within their own religious communities and in public discourse about Muslim Americans. Su'ad Abdul Khabeer, Associate Professor at the University of Michigan, attends to this erasure by centering Black Muslims to investigate the relationship between race, religion, and popular culture. In Muslim Cool: Race, Religion, and Hip Hop in the United States (NYU Press, 2016) she offers a rich ethnography of Muslims in Chicago, many of whom are involved with the Inner-City Muslim Action Network. IMAN and members of its community regularly perform “Muslim Cool,” a blueprint for being Muslim in America that is steeped in Blackness. Abdul Khabeer’s research helps us understand how Black Muslims have shaped Islam in America in general despite intra-communal tensions around anti-Blackness. In our conversation we discuss new approaches to Hip Hop, the loop of Muslim Cool, opinions about music in Islam and its use among Afrodiasporic Muslim communities, Black Muslim women’s veiling habits and its adoption by non-Black Muslims, Muslim Dandies and formulations of masculinity, state sponsored cultural diplomacy trips and Muslim hip hop artists, Sapelo Square as an effort to produce materials about Black Muslims, and how family histories can enrich the archives of Black Muslim Americans. Kristian Petersen is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy & Religious Studies at Old Dominion University. He is the author of Interpreting Islam in China: Pilgrimage, Scripture, and Language in the Han Kitab (Oxford University Press, 2017). He is currently working on a monograph entitled The Cinematic Lives of Muslims, and is the editor of the forthcoming volumes Muslims in the Movies: A Global Anthology (ILEX Foundation) and New Approaches to Islam in Film (Routledge). You can find out more about his work on his website, follow him on Twitter @BabaKristian, or email him at [email protected]. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/islamic-studies

You’ve heard them all before. “Religions are Belief Systems.” “Religion is a Private Matter.” “I'm spiritual but not religious.” Our culture is full of popular stereotypes about religion, both positive and negative. Many people uncritically assume that religion is intrinsically violent, or that religion makes people moral, or that it is simply “bullshit.” In Stereotyping Religion: Critiquing Clichés (Bloomsbury, 2017), edited by Brad Stoddard, Assistant Professor at McDaniel College, and Craig Martin, Associate Professor at St. Thomas Aquinas College, several clichés are understood within a social and historical context, which enables us to see how they are produced and what makes them effective. In our conversation we explore several of these stereotypes, what makes them possible and desirable for communities that reproduce and curate them, secularization theory, the role of atheism, liberal political discourse about religion, critical thinking, and how “Stereotyping Religion” works in the classroom. Kristian Petersen is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy & Religious Studies at Old Dominion University. He is the author of Interpreting Islam in China: Pilgrimage, Scripture, and Language in the Han Kitab (Oxford University Press, 2017). He is currently working on a monograph entitled The Cinematic Lives of Muslims, and is the editor of the forthcoming volumes Muslims in the Movies: A Global Anthology (ILEX Foundation) and New Approaches to Islam in Film (Routledge). You can find out more about his work on his website, follow him on Twitter @BabaKristian, or email him at [email protected]. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/islamic-studies

Faith Ed: Teaching About Religion in an Age of Intolerance (Beacon Press, 2017) by Linda K. Wertheimer profiles the beauty and difficulty of teaching about religion in public schools. Teaching about religion in a public school in the United States is rewarding, but very difficult. It is not hyperbolic to say that one moment, everything is going fine and students are learning a lot and the next the class is on the news and steeped in controversy. Do an internet search using the term “Burkagate,” or look up the story of a Wellesley, Massachusetts 6th-grade class who visited a mosque on a field trip in Boston in 2010. In 2015, a school district in Virginia cancelled all classes in December 2015 after a controversy erupted from a teacher asking students to copy Arabic calligraphy which just happened to recite the Shahada, the Muslim statement of faith and one of the pillars of Islam. A Florida school district found itself mired in controversy over a guest speaker from the Council of American-Islamic Relations (CAIR for short). The book is out in hardback and paperback from Beacon Press. Greg Soden is the host "Classical Ideas," a podcast about religion and religious ideas. You can find it on iTunes here. 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 the information age, knowledge is power. Hence, facilitating the access to knowledge to wider publics empowers citizens and makes societies more democratic. How can publishers and authors contribute to this process? This podcast addresses this issue. We interview Professor Austin Choi-Fitzpatrick, whose book, The Good Drone: How Social Movements Democratize Surveillance (forthcoming with MIT Press) is undergoing a Massive Online Peer-Review (MOPR) process, where everyone can make comments on his manuscript. Additionally, his book will be Open Access (OA) since the date of publication. We discuss with him how do MOPR and OA work, how he managed to combine both of them and how these initiatives can contribute to the democratization of knowledge. You can participate in the MOPR process of The Good Drone through this link: https://thegooddrone.pubpub.org/ Felipe G. Santos is a PhD candidate at the Central European University. His research is focused on how activists care for each other and how care practices within social movements mobilize and radicalize heavily aggrieved collectives. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/islamic-studies

Claire Pamment’s book Comic Performance in Pakistan: The Bhānd (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017) is a fantastic new book centered on the Punjabi folk art of the Bhānd, or comic performance. Pamment explores the history and present of the Bhānd and Bhānd artists through a thoroughly interdisciplinary lens that engages performance studies, ethnography, history, and the study of Religion. In our conversation on this wonderful new book, we talked about the pre-colonial Islamicate and colonial history of the Bhānd, the way in which this genre complicates the boundaries of Hindu and Muslim folk art, the manner in which the bhānd has disturbed and unsettled class and gender hierarchies in Pakistan, the political work of the bhānd, and the bhānd in the era of satellite television. This lyrically written book on a long-running and hugely important tradition of Islamicate humor will interest much scholars of Islam, South Asia, Anthropology, and Performance Studies. SherAli Tareen is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Franklin and Marshall College. His research focuses on Muslim intellectual traditions and debates in early modern and modern South Asia. His academic publications are available here. He can be reached at [email protected]. Listener feedback is most welcome. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/islamic-studies

Ian Johnson’s new book, The Souls of China: The Return of Religion After Mao (Pantheon, 2017), was called "a masterpiece of observation and empathy" by The New York Review of Books, and The Economist, who included the book on its Best of 2017 list, said the book, "Shows how a resurgence of faith is quietly changing the country." The Guardian said the book is "full of moving encounters with Chinese citizens ... Johnson succeeds in having produced a nuanced group portrait of Chinese citizens striving for non-material answers in an era of frenetic materialism." I just finished the book myself and was stunning in its portrayals. If you hope to understand the trajectory of modern China, arguably the fastest-rising international superpower, understanding the religious Taoist, Christianity, folk religion, and Islam of China will be helpful, if not essential. A Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist, Ian Johnson is a regular contributor to The New York Review of Books and The New York Times; his work has also appeared in The New Yorker and National Geographic. He is an advising editor for the Journal of Asian Studies and teaches courses on religion in Beijing. He is the author of The Souls of China, Wild Grass, A Mosque in Munich, and The Rise of the Muslim Brotherhood in the West. Greg Soden is the host "Classical Ideas," a podcast about religion and religious ideas. You can find it on iTunes here. 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 The Invention of Race in the European Middle Ages (Cambridge University Press 2018), Geraldine Heng collects a remarkable array of medieval approaches to race that show the breadth and depth of the kinds of racial thinking in medieval society. In creating a detailed impression of the medieval race-making that would be reconfigured into the biological racism of the modern era, The Invention of Race in the European Middle Ages reaches beyond medievalists and race-studies scholars to anyone interested in the long history of race. Throughout the study, Heng treats race-making as a repeating tendency to demarcate human beings through differences that are selectively essentialized as absolute and fundamental. Thus constituted, these categories are then used to guide the differential apportioning of power. Scholars working in critical race studies have clearly demonstrated that culture predisposes notions of race. The Invention of Race in the European Middle Ages reaffirms that insight by examining the era before the dominance of biological discourses. Race has always been about strategically creating a hierarchy of peoples for differential treatment. By exploring race in the European middle ages, Heng lays bare the skeleton of racial thinking as a sorting mechanism, a structural relationship for the management of human differences. In Heng's hands, the tools of critical race studies make it possible to name the systems and atrocities of the Middle Ages for what they were, revealing race-making before the modern vocabulary of race coalesced. Bringing together a group of specialized archives that aren't usually in conversation, Heng in many cases allows the medieval past to powerfully testify to the pre-modern history of race-formation, racial administration, and racist exploitation and oppression. Beginning with the violent and sweeping anti-Semitism of thirteenth century England, showing the ways that Jews became the template by which other races were measured, The Invention of Race in the European Middle Ages launches a careful exposure of the way that minority groups were (and are) manipulated to create the sense of a national majority. A short but potent comparison to the English treatment of Irish subjects drives the analysis home. A researcher, writer, editor, and educator, Carl Nellis digs in archives and academic libraries for the critically-acclaimed Lore Podcast and as research lead for Unobscured Podcast. Studies on both sides of the Atlantic left him chasing the tangled colonial history that threads the culture of the Middle Ages into today’s United States. 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 study of Islam is often focused on subjects involved in legal debates or ritual practice. But our understanding of Muslims should also be informed by everyday practices found in the suburbs. In Suburban Islam (Oxford University Press, 2018), Justine Howe, Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Case Western Reserve University, examines the social and spiritual contexts of Muslims living outside of Chicago. Her study focuses on a “third space” for American Islam, a community space called the Webb Foundation, and its membership. Muslim identity for many Webb members is shaped by shared ideals about consumer culture, leisure activities, parenting, and the construction of family life. The fluid and open nature of the community provides room for debate and discussion about gendered practices, racial and ethnic divisions within the Muslim community, or religious pluralism. In the growing body of scholarship on Muslims in America Suburban Islam adds a unique vantage point that greatly adds to our overall vision of the community within American religious history. In our conversation we discussed the history of Islam in Chicago, female authority, pluralism in the Qur’an, consumerist practices, the public celebration of the Prophet Muhammad’s birthday, adult educational programming, book groups, jurisprudence classes, religious devotion, and American Muslim suburban culture. Kristian Petersen is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy & Religious Studies at Old Dominion University. He is the author of Interpreting Islam in China: Pilgrimage, Scripture, and Language in the Han Kitab (Oxford University Press, 2017). He is currently working on a monograph entitled The Cinematic Lives of Muslims, and is the editor of the forthcoming volumes Muslims in the Movies: A Global Anthology (ILEX Foundation) and New Approaches to Islam in Film (Routledge). You can find out more about his work on his website, follow him on Twitter @BabaKristian, or email him at [email protected]. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/islamic-studies

Ahmad Atif Ahmad’s Pitfalls of Scholarship: Lessons from Islamic Studies (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016) is a unique reflection on the field of Islamic studies. It is not quite a memoir, although it is reflective of Islamic studies, academia, and higher education in general. It is also not quite a book of theory, although it offers several deep readings of various figures in the Muslim intellectual canon. Rather, it is a collection of essays. Chapter 1, for example is a rumination the humanities and its place in the modern academy. Ahmad then goes on to concept of academic frustration. He builds on this in the third chapter by examining the iconic Muslim intellectual al-Ghazali. The final chapter ties the wider world into the academy and considers themes of nationalism and democracy. In this interview, we talk to Ahmad about what it is to be a scholar in 21st-century America (and specifically a scholar of Islam in 21st-century America), the politics of the field, what it is to be bold in academia, and the value of curiosity, all with Ahmad’s jocular cheer and sage advice. Ahmad Atif Ahmad is professor of religious studies at the University of California in Santa Barbara (UCSB). He also serves on UCSB’s 'Council on Faculty Issues and Awards' and the UC-System wide Academic Advisory Committee for Internship Programs in the University Center in Washington, DC. He previously served as associate director of the University of California Center in Washington, Sultan Qaboos Chair of Mideast Studies at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, and as visiting associate professor at Utrecht University in the Netherlands. The author of ‘Islamic Law: Cases, Authorities, and Worldview (London: Bloomsbury, 2017), ‘The Fatigue of the Sharia’ (NYC: Palgrave, 2012), and ‘Structural Interrelations of Theory and Practice in Islamic Law' (Leiden: Brill, 2006), Ahmad teaches courses on Islamic legal reasoning in medieval Islam and early modern Egypt. Nadirah Mansour is a graduate student at Princeton University’s Department of Near Eastern Studies working on the global intellectual history of the Arabic-language press. She tweets @NAMansour26 and produces another Middle-East and North Africa-related podcast: Reintroducing. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/islamic-studies

Revival from Below: The Deoband Movement and Global Islam (University of California Press, 2018) by Brannon D. Ingram is a timely study of the Deoband movement from its inception in India to its transnational contemporary context in South Africa. Through careful analysis of historical textual discourses, Ingram carefully guides his readers through important polemics that manifested amongst the Deoband ‘ulama and its implications for Muslim publics and their performance of a “traditional” Islam. The study, then, goes onto highlight why and how the Deoband movement’s relationship to Sufism has been miscategorized and crucially situates the Deoband ‘ulama’s own complex relationship with Sufism, especially Sufi ethics and comportment. Overall, Ingram challenges his readers to think more carefully about Sufism in the 21st century. This book is a must read for those interested in Sufism, South Asian Islam, and global transnational Islam. Shobhana Xavier is an Assistant Professor of Religion at Queen’s University. Her research areas are on contemporary Sufism in North America and South Asia. She is the author of Sacred Spaces and Transnational Networks in American Sufism (Bloombsury Press, 2018) and a co-author of Contemporary Sufism: Piety, Politics, and Popular Culture (Routledge, 2017). More details about her research and scholarship may be found here and here. She may be reached at [email protected] 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 On the Mediterranean and the Nile: The Jews of Egypt (Indiana University Press, 2017), Aimée Israel-Pelletier, Professor and Head of French at the University of Texas at Arlington, looks at the work of five Egyptian Jewish writers. She confronts issues of identity, exile, language, immigration, Arab nationalism, European colonialism, and discourse on the Holocaust. Israel-Pelletier's volume is a hugely important part of the project recovering and transmitting Egyptian Jewish life and thought. Max Kaiser is a PhD candidate at the University of Melbourne. He can be reached at [email protected]. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/islamic-studies

Recent economic crises have made the centrality of debt, and the instability it creates, increasingly apparent. In Beyond Debt: Islamic Experiments in Global Finance (University of Chicago Press, 2018), anthropologist Daromir Rudnyckyj illustrates how the Malaysian state, led by the central bank, is seeking to make the country’s capital Kuala Lumpur the central node of global financial activity conducted in accordance with Islam. Beyond Debt tracks efforts to re-center international finance in an emergent Islamic global city and, ultimately, to challenge the very foundations of conventional finance. Daromir Rudnyckyj is Associate Professor of anthropology at the University of Victoria. Hillary Kaell co-hosts NBIR and is Associate Professor of Religion at Concordia University in Montreal, Canada. 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 his groundbreaking new book, Alef is for Allah: Childhood, Emotion, and Visual Culture in Islamic Societies (University of California Press, 2018), Jamal Elias takes his readers on a riveting intellectual tour thematically centered on the interaction of childhood, visual culture, and affect in contemporary Muslim majority societies, and in Muslim intellectual thought more broadly. Drawing on while also significantly extending and reworking recent theoretical explorations in the field of affect theory, Elias interrogates, with lucidity as well as with dazzling insight, the promises, aspirations, and tensions invested in childhood and the figure of the child in Muslim visual culture. Elias convincingly shows that not only is childhood itself a concept and construct fraught with ambiguity, but also that the mobilization of the ideal child through material and visual culture can take remarkably malleable forms and purposes. Alef is for Allah moves seamlessly between such varied contexts as Iran, Turkey, and Pakistan to illumine the depth and diversity of the intersection of piety, nationalism, and visual culture in Islam and Muslim societies. This lyrically written book also includes incredible and excellently presented images making it particularly well suited for undergraduate and graduate seminars on material Islam, Muslim visual culture, affect studies, and childhood studies. SherAli Tareen is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Franklin and Marshall College. His research focuses on Muslim intellectual traditions and debates in early modern and modern South Asia. His academic publications are available at https://fandm.academia.edu/SheraliTareen/. He can be reached at [email protected]. Listener feedback is most welcome. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/islamic-studies

George Mason University professor Ben Gatling’s debut book, Expressions of Sufi Culture in Tajikistan (University of Wisconsin Press, 2018), is a beautifully written ethnography exploring the lives, religious practice, and narratives of Sufi believers near Dushanbe, Tajikistan. Through close examination of historical narratives, nostalgia, material practice, ritual, and more, Ben shows how his interlocutors link their faith and their practice with the religious and expressive traditions of Central Asian Islam. The alternative temporalities and asynchronies present in these narratives provide persuasive counter-narratives to the Tajik state’s ideologies. At the same time, he shows that reading these narratives “simply” as resistance is not accurate, but as a way of shaping their own experiences of the present. Timothy Thurston is Lecturer in Chinese Studies at the University of Leeds. His research examines language at the nexus of tradition and modernity in China’s Tibet. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/islamic-studies

After years of being overlooked, there has been a growing interest among academic historians in the history of Turkish Guest Workers in West Germany. In her new book, Turkish Germans in the Federal Republic of Germany: Immigration, Space, and Belonging, 1961-1990 (Cambridge University Press, 2018), Sarah Thomsen Vierra examines the experience of Turkish immigrants in Berlin. Focused on social history, she synthesized evidence from oral histories, archives, memoirs, and newspapers. Building upon research from a dissertation that won the German Historical Institute’s Fritz Stern Prize, the book analyzes how the first and second generations of Turkish Germans created local spaces where they belonged despite feelings of disillusionment with nationalist xenophobia. It also includes much analysis about the role of women in the guest worker program and its aftermath. Thomsen’s book is essential for anyone interested in the modern history of European migration. Sarah Thomsen Vierra teaches at New England College. Michael E. O’Sullivan is Associate Professor of History at Marist College where he teaches courses about Modern Europe. He published Disruptive Power: Catholic Women, Miracles, and Politics in Modern Germany, 1918-1965 with University of Toronto Press in 2018. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/islamic-studies

Sounding Islam: Voice, Media, and Sonic Atmospheres in an Indian Ocean World(University of California Press, 2018) by Patrick Eisenlohr is an exciting ethnographic study of Mauritian Muslims’ soundscapes. Through the exploration of na‘t, or devotional poetic recitations that honor the prophet Muhammad, Eisenlohr captures the sensory dimension of Islam, particularly through a linguistic anthropological analysis of performance, poetry, and acoustics. The book situates Mauritian Muslim’ practices and devotions within the context of Islamic piety both across the Indian Ocean but also through a transnational and diasporic lens. In doing so, it highlights the sectarian differences that follow the performance of na‘t within the Muslim world, signaling to the intersubjectivity of Islamic piety. The study challenges scholars of Islam to take sonic atmospheres seriously, especially as it provides key insights into Islamic identity formation, piety, and ritual practices. Shobhana Xavier is an Assistant Professor of Religion at Queen’s University. Her research areas are on contemporary Sufism in North America and South Asia. She is the author of Sacred Spaces and Transnational Networks in American Sufism(Bloombsury Press, 2018) and a co-author of Contemporary Sufism: Piety, Politics, and Popular Culture (Routledge, 2017). More details about her research and scholarship may be found here and here. She may be reached at [email protected]. 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 Indonesia’s declaration of independence in 1945 up until today, the relationship between Indonesian nationalism, Islam, and modernity has been a key subject of debate. One of the central figures in this debate was the great writer, journalist, public intellectual – and pious Muslim from Minangkabau, West Sumatra, Haji Abdul Malik Karim Amrullah, better known by his pen-name, Hamka. Largely self-taught, Hamka was one of Indonesia’s most prolific writers. Between the 1920s and his death in 1981 he penned novels, short stories, biographies, memoirs, self-help books, travel books, histories, and many studies of Islam, including a famous thirty-volume commentary on the Qur’an. In Hamka's Great Story: A Master Writer’s Vision of Islam for Modern Indonesia (University of Wisconsin Press, 2016), James R. Rush traces the development of Hamka’s thinking as expressed through these works against the backdrop of Indonesia’s tumultuous modern history, including late Dutch colonial rule, the Japanese occupation, the Indonesian revolution, the Sukarno years, and the New Order military dictatorship under Suharto. Since the end of the New Order regime in 1998 some scholars have referred to a "conservative turn" in Islam in Indonesia. Listen to James Rush explain how an appreciation of Hamka and his influence in twentieth century Indonesia can help us better understand what is happening in Indonesian Islam today. Listeners of this episode might also enjoy listening to: Vanessa Hearman, Unmarked Graves: Death and Survival in the Anti-Communist Violence in East Java, Indonesia.Anthony Reid, A History of Southeast Asia: Critical Crossroads Patrick Jory teaches Southeast Asian History in the School of Historical and Philosophical Inquiry at the University of Queensland. He can be reached at: [email protected] 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 Islamic intellectual history, it is generally assumed that the Ottomans did not contribute much to Islamic thought. With his new book, Caliphate Redefined: The Mystical Turn in Ottoman Political Thought (Princeton University Press, 2018), Hüseyin Yılmaz uses the Ottoman notion of the caliphate to push back against that assumption: he demonstrates how a new understanding of the caliphate was developed by Ottoman thinkers, by engaging with those that came before them as well as their own lived present. But Yılmaz goes beyond simply addressing the caliphate and political thought. Caliphate Redefined represents one of the first major studies of pre-modern Ottoman thought, mapping out the field for the benefit for all of those who engage with it. Furthermore, Yilmaz pushes implicitly and forcefully for recognition of Turkish as a critical language in Islamic intellectual history, acknowledging its contribution to the Islamic thought canon. Finally, Caliphate Redefined is a stunning study of Sufism in the Turkish-speaking context, allowing us a glimpse of Sufism’s intellectual history and how it intersects and encompasses different aspects of Muslim life. Huseyin Yilmaz is associate professor at George Mason University. He holds a Ph.D. in History and Middle Eastern Studies from Harvard University. His research interests focus on the early modern Middle East including political thought, geographic imageries, social movements, and cultural history. He is also the Director of the Ali Vural Ak Center for Global Islamic Studies at George Mason University. Prior to his appointment at George Mason, he taught for the Introduction to the Humanities Program and Department of History at Stanford University and the Department of History at University of South Florida. His new book, the subject of our interview, Caliphate Redefined: The Mystical Turn in Ottoman Political Thought (Princeton University Press, 2018), is the first comprehensive study of pre-modern Ottoman political thought and focuses on the intersection of mysticism and the definition of authority. Nadirah Mansour is a graduate student at Princeton University’s Department of Near Eastern Studies working on the global intellectual history of the Arabic-language press. She tweets @NAMansour26 and produces another Middle-East and North Africa-related podcast: Reintroducing. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/islamic-studies

McKenzie Wark’s new book offers 21 focused studies of thinkers working in a wide range of fields who are worth your attention. The chapters of General Intellects: Twenty-One Thinkers for the Twenty-First Century (Verso, 2017) introduce readers to important work in Anglophone cultural studies, psychoanalysis, political theory, media theory, speculative realism, science studies, Italian and French workerist and autonomist thought, two “imaginative readings of Marx,” and two “unique takes on the body politic.” There are significant implications of these ideas for how we live and work at the contemporary university, and we discussed some of those in our conversation. This is a great book to read and to teach with! Carla Nappi is the Andrew W. Mellon Chair in the Department of History at the University of Pittsburgh. You can learn more about her and her work here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/islamic-studies

Winner of the Middle East Studies Association’s 2018 Albert Hourani Book Award, Alireza Doostdar’s The Iranian Metaphysicals: Explorations in Science, Islam, and the Uncanny (Princeton University Press, 2018) is a mesmerizing study of discourses and practices surrounding the Occult sciences or ‘metaphysicals’ in contemporary Iran. Thoroughly disrupting the common association of the Occult with popular religion and mystical enchantment, this book explores the complex and conflicting rationalities that inform varied metaphysical experimentations occupying a range of Iranian actors. Through a pulsating interrogation that moves seamlessly between narrative and analysis, Doostdar demonstrates that the landscape of the Occult sciences in Iran cannot be explained through the confining binary or opposition between state orthodoxy/paternalism and popular religion. In our conversation, we talked about a range of issues including the rationality of enchantment, geomancy, Iranian spiritists, the coalescence of pre-modern Muslim intellectual traditions with modern scientific notions of empiricism, and the negotiation of secrecy and revelation in hagiographies. The Iranian Metaphysicals is an incredible scholarly achievement that will be debated and discussed for many years, and will make a great text to wrestle with in the classroom as well. SherAli Tareen is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Franklin and Marshall College. His research focuses on Muslim intellectual traditions and debates in early modern and modern South Asia. His academic publications are available here. He can be reached at ([email protected]). Listener feedback is most welcome. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/islamic-studies