New Books in Islamic Studies

Aasim Sajjad Akhtar’s The Politics of Common Sense: State, Society and Culture in Pakistan(Cambridge University Press, 2018) is an incisive study of continuity as well as change in Pakistan that has moved the country towards religious conservatism and increased authoritarianism. Akhtar, a political scientist and self-confessed left-wing activist, documents the development of political power in Pakistan that with the military dictatorship in the 1980s of General Zia ul-Haq ended an era of more liberal and left-wing politics and put the country on a path of right-wing religious ultra-conservatism from which it has yet to deviate. In tracking that development, Akhtar’s book makes a significant contribution by focussing not only on its ideological but also its economic aspects as well as the religious right’s appeal to urban shopkeepers and traders. He projects the religious right as a vehicle for subordinate classes to access the state and claim a stake in status quo politics. Akhtar’s contribution with this book is also his analysis of the waning of counter-hegemonic and transformative politics in Pakistan. Akhtar notes that the perceived benefits of carving out a stake in a patronage-based system far outstrip the cost and risk of efforts to transform the system. It is that cost-benefit analysis that has given Pakistan politics resilience and undergird a system in which religion is the ultimate source of legitimacy at the expense of any opposition to class and state power. In looking at how subordinate classes cope through the politics of common sense, Akhtar’s book represents a significant and innovative addition to the study not only of Pakistan but of an era in which religious, nationalist and populist forces are on the rise. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/islamic-studies

Sumantra Bose's new book Secular States, Religious Politics, India, Turkey and the Future of Secularism (Cambridge University Press, 2018) is a fascinating comparison of the rise of religious parties in the non-Western world’s two major attempts to establish a post-colonial secular state. The secular experiments in Turkey and India were considered success stories for the longest period of time but that has changed with the rise of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party in Turkey and Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party in India and the capture of state power by political forces with an anti-secular vision of nationhood. In his ground-breaking book, Bose attributes the rise of secularism to the fact that non-Western states like Turkey and India never adopted the Western principle of separation of state and church and instead based their secularism on the principle of state intervention and regulation of the religious sphere. In doing so, Bose distinguishes between the embedding of secularism in Turkey in authoritarianism entrenched in the carving out of the modern Turkish state from the ruins of the Ottoman Empire and the fact that secularism in India is rooted in culture and a democratic form of government. With the anti-secular trend in Turkey and India fitting into a global trend in which cultural and religious identity is gaining traction, Bose’s study constitutes a significant contribution to the study of the future of secularism and the often complex relationship between religious parties and the secular state. James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at Singapore’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/islamic-studies

Shenila Khoja-Moolji’s Forging an Ideal Educated Girl: The Production of Desirable Subjects in Muslim South Asia (University of California Press, 2018) is a pathbreaking and incredibly timely monograph that combines tools of education studies, gender studies, and post-colonial genealogy to interrogate the promises and paradoxes invested in the idea of girls’ education. Shifting her camera of analysis between global discourses on female education and empowerment and the translation of those discourses in the form of educational policies, cultural developments, and political maneuverings in post-colonial societies like Pakistan, Khoja-Moolji masterfully unveils the fraught nature of an otherwise often taken for granted ideal of girls’ education. Through a close and careful reading of varied and often colorful state and non-state archives, this book traces the often contingent and contradictory projects of nationalism and citizenship reflected in competing imaginaries of the ideal of an “educated girl” over time, with a focus on the context of Pakistan. This remarkably lucid text will be widely read by scholars of education, gender, South Asia, and post-colonial thought, and will also make an excellent choice for undergraduate and graduate seminars. 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

Both a history of science and a history of Islam, The Lighthouse and the Observatory: Islam, Science, and Empire in Late Ottoman Egypt (Cambridge University Press, 2018) by Daniel Stolz tells the story of Ottoman Egypt and astronomy, looking at how astronomy tied together the state and religious practice. We talk about how religious authority was negotiated through astronomy, the zij (the genre of astronomic handbooks used by astronomers), translation, and how print affected the distribution of astronomic knowledge. Stolz also contends with the specter of the nahda, or the Arabic language intellectual renaissance, and he tells us how he deals with it in his work. As always, we check in with the field of Middle Eastern history and ask what one should do with increasingly limited access to archives. Daniel Stolz is an assistant professor at University of Wisconsin, Madison. He was previously a visiting assistant professor of history at Northwestern University, where he was also affiliated with the Science in Human Culture Program. He received his PhD from Princeton University in Near Eastern Studies. He is a historian of the modern Middle East, specializing in Egypt and the late Ottoman Empire. He is the author of many articles on science and religion in Egypt and the monograph discussed in this interview. 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

Anand Taneja’s Jinnealogy: Time, Islam, and Ecological Thought in the Medieval Ruins of Delhi (Stanford University Press, 2017) is a landmark publication that interrogates modes of religious practice and imaginaries of time that disrupt dominant claims and narratives of the post-colonial state about religion and religious identity. Centered on the ruins of Firoz Shah Kotla in Delhi, this book brings into view visions of sovereignty, ethics, hospitality, and inter-communal encounters that rescue Islam in modern South Asia from the suffocating pressures, anxieties, and amnesias of nationalist politics and historiographies. Conceptually bold, ethnographically vivacious, and historically grounded, this book masterfully carries a tragic sensibility while also offering provocative avenues of hope and optimism. Written with poetic eloquence and lyrical command, this book will not only be widely read and debated by scholars of South Asia, Islam, and religion, it also cries out for adoption as what will surely become a Bollywood blockbuster. 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

The story of Muslims in America has primarily been told through the experiences of men and often revolves around narratives of immigration. Sylvia Chan-Malik, Assistant Professor of American Studies and Women and Gender Studies at Rutgers University, expands upon and challenges this scholarly pattern in Being Muslim: A Cultural History of Women of Color in American Islam (NYU Press, 2018). Chan-Malik centers Black Muslim women’s involvement in U.S. communities and the various spaces of social identity that are frequently ignored in scholarship. Crucial to her analysis is how social racial-religious formation informs both lived religion and how Muslim women are represented in public. “Being Muslim,” therefore, can be variously embodied in Black Muslim womanhood. Through an episodic exploration of Islam in twentieth and twenty-first century America Chan-Malik demonstrates the crucial ways race, gender, and religion intersect. In our conversation we discussed the “blackness” of American Islam, the Ahmadiyya Movement, domesticity, the Nation of Islam, Betty Shabazz, cultural representations of Black Muslim women, the problem with feminism and how it can be deployed, American perceptions of Iranian’s 1979 revolution, and environmentalism and food justice. 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

Samuel Helfont‘s Compulsion in Religion: Saddam Hussein, Islam and the Roots of Insurgencies in Iraq (Oxford University Press, 2018) makes an invaluable contribution to an understanding of Iraqi strongman’s Saddam Hussein harnessing of Islam in support of his Baathist regime and ideology and to ensure that Islam as a social institution is incapable of turning against him. In doing so, Helfont also contributes to the understanding of the dynamics of religious legitimization of autocratic and illiberal regimes that is at the core of struggles in countries like Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. Helfont’s well-written, easily accessible book benefits from access to documents of Saddam Hussein’s government and Baath Party that were captured by US and opposition forces in the wake of the 2003 US invasion and have been unavailable until recently. Helfont also positions religion as a social force that represents both an opportunity and an asset to autocratic leaders who on the one hand garner legitimacy by identification with the faith but also need to ensure that it does not emerge as the motor of opposition or resistance. Helfont further demonstrates that in contrast to the immense infrastructure that Saddam rolled out to bend Islam to his will and interpretation, US forces underestimated the degree of social control that he exerted and lacked the institutional and intelligence capacity to manage religious sentiment in the wake of his overthrow. The breakdown in social control explains, at least in part, the religious insurgencies the US confronted in Iraq since 2003. With his analysis of the management of religion by Saddam and the breakdown after his fall, Helfont has made an important contribution to the study of Iraq. James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at Singapore’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/islamic-studies

In the last few decades, questions relating to Islam’s compatibility with liberal secular democracy, or the question of why Islam remains incompatible with Western liberal norms of thought and politics have generated considerable commentary in both scholarly and journalistic communities. Among the central assumptions driving such compatibility talk relates to Islam’s allegedly inherent incapacity for critique, a virtue often heralded as a signature achievement and characteristic of liberal secularism. Irfan Ahmad’s Religion as Critique: Islamic Critical Thinking from Mecca to the Marketplace (University of North Carolina Press, 2017) represents a devastating indictment of this dominant liberal assumption that Islam is inimical to critique. Turning this assumption on its head, Ahmad combines historical, textual, and ethnographic methods to argue that critique is and has always been central to Muslim intellectual thought and lived practice. The distinctive feature of this book is the way it fluctuates the camera of analysis between a genealogy of Western liberal discourses of critique as a way to puncture their universality and inevitability, while bringing into view alternate logics and imaginaries of critique in Muslim thought and practice, past and present. Eminently readable, this book will be widely discussed and debated in multiple fields, including Religious Studies and Islamic Studies. SherAli Tareen is Assistant 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 1971, a Sri Lankan Sufi arrived in Philadelphia to address a group of spiritual seekers. This trip initiated the career of one of the most influential teachers in the history of North American Sufism. In Sacred Spaces and Transnational Networks in American Sufism: Bawa Muhaiyaddeen and Contemporary Shrine Cultures (Bloomsbury Academic, 2018), Merin Shobhana Xavier, Assistant Professor of Religion at Queen’s University, provides a rich ethnographic account of his American followers, the Bawa Muhaiyaddeen Fellowship (BMF), but also introduces us to his devotees in Sri Lanka, the Serendib Sufi Study Circle. The book tells us the story of Bawa’s early life and career in South Asia, his travels to the United States, and the development of his spiritual communities. Xavier narrates this history from oral accounts of followers she gathered during extensive multisited fieldwork. Much of the book reveals the spaces and ritual activities of his contemporary followers in all their diversity. Participants come from Muslim, Christian, Hindu, and “spiritual but not religious” backgrounds, each with their own interpretation of Bawa’s teachings and significance in the universe. Xavier’s fruitful comparative and translational approach forces the reader to rethink many assumptions about the character of Islam in America, how global movements connect and develop over space, and the dynamic relationship between religious leaders and their followers. In our conversation we discussed Sufism in North America, the Sri Lankan religious landscape, the challenges of multisited fieldwork, Bawa’s ashrams, mosque, and mazar, making pilgrimage, the role of women in the movement, the meaning behind Bawa’s multiple designations and titles, and how followers engage Bawa after his death. 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

Courtney Freer‘s new book Rentier Islamism: The Influence of the Muslim Brotherhood in Gulf Monarchies (Oxford University Press, 2018) contributes significantly to an understanding of one of the most controversial political groups in Middle East politics. Widely viewed as a player that cannot be excluded from the political process in the region, the Muslim Brotherhood is at the crux of political conflict, particularly in Egypt, where its president, Mohammed Morsi, was toppled in a military coup in 2013, and in the Gulf where it is at the crux of a dispute that has pitted Qatar against an alliance led by the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia. Courtney Freer’s study of the Brotherhood in the Gulf portrays the development of an opposition group in an autocratic environment. It also is a study of a group that operates in an environment in which one of its key appeals, the provision of social services like healthcare, is of little use because the oil-rich Gulf states introduced welfare states that offered their citizenry cradle-to-grave social security as part of the social contract. Similarly, the Brotherhood’s role as a provider of a religiously couched identity had to compete in societies with strong tribal allegiances and governments that co-opted Islam as part of their legitimization. Nonetheless, the Brotherhood played a key role in state building in the Gulf where highly educated members of the group fleeing persecution in countries like Egypt and Syria found employment, particularly in education and the judiciary. By tracing the different trajectories of the Brotherhood in the Gulf ranging from Kuwait, where an institutionalized parliamentary system allowed it to ease into mainstream politics, to the UAE, where it came go be seen as an existential threat alongside all expressions of political Islam, Freer fills a vital gap in the literature about a region that is in throes of volatile, often brutal transition. James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at Singapore’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/islamic-studies

Recent years have seen new waves of research in Syriac studies, the medieval Middle East, and family history. Combining all three, Lev Weitz’s Between Christ and Caliph: Law, Marriage, and Christian Community in Early Islam (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018), revisits the early years of Islamic civilization by looking at an oft-neglected population in the secondary literature, Syriac Christians. Weitz’s study uses marital practice from the seventh through tenth centuries to illustrate how Islamic law influenced the development of Christian law and the role religious authorities –that is the Christian bishops– had to play in it. We talk through polygamy, confessional boundaries, and what households meant now and then; Weitz also fills us in on what the growing field of Syriac studies looks like, how it is changing, and how a scholar of the medieval Middle East gets their sources. Lev Weitz is an historian of the Islamic Middle East. He is an assistant professor at the Catholic University of America, in the Department of History; he also directs the Islamic World Studies program at Catholic University. For academic year 2018-19, he will be a fellow of the Kluge Center at the Library of Congress. He did his PhD at Princeton University at the Department of Near Easter Studies. His scholarly interests lie in the encounters among Muslims, Christians, and Jews that have shaped the Middle East’s history from the coming of Islam to the present. 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

Harold Morales, an associate professor of Religion at Morgan State University, is the author of the momentous new book, Latino and Muslim in America: Race, Religion, and the Making of a New Minority (Oxford University Press, 2018). Morales’ monograph provides a rich ethnographic analysis of various Latino Muslim communities, groups, and individuals in America. Situated in the context of hyper-racialization of post 9/11, Morales carefully lays out his interlocutors’ powerful journeys of reversion (instead of conversion) to Islam and how they form historical and cultural continuities but also transformations, such as through evoking Islamic Spain (Al-Andalus) or food cultures. With its intersection of race, ethnicity, religion, and media studies, Morales’ has made a formidable contribution to the study of Islam in America, but also broadly on American religious experiences. M. 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 on 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

Cyrus Ali Zargar, Associate Professor at the University of Central Florida, is the author of The Polished Mirror: Storytelling and the Pursuit of Virtue in Islamic Philosophy and Sufism (Oneworld, 2017). Zargar explores how the study of good character and the pursuit of perfection, or virtue ethics, was part of a broader discursive network that included Islamic jurisprudence, theology, philosophy and mysticism. Using the metaphor of the polished mirror and the tradition of storytelling shared by Islamic philosophers and Sufis, Zargar frames virtue ethics not as a fixed notion, but as part of a network that broadly engages ideal positive character traits. Each chapter of the book focuses on various philosophers or Sufis from the years 900 to 1300. Each of these figures variously framed ethics through sacred revelation (Qur’an) and prophetic tradition (hadith) all the while incorporating rationality or traditions of exemplary saintly figures. Despite their differing modes and methodologies, at times, their conclusions were similar. For instance, the philosophers, such as Avicenna and Ibn Tufayl, having gleaned from the ancient Greek traditions, amplified traits of friendship and love for the betterment of society. While for some Sufis, the quest for human perfection set them on a path that focused on the cultivation of internal qualities, as seen in the tales of Ansari, ‘Attar, and Rumi. The stories told here are provocative, humorous, and truly pedagogical. They help the reader transcend normative notions of ethics, especially as limited to Islamic jurisprudence and positive law, and highlights the complex ways in which philosophers and Sufis were intimately focused on being good and doing good as taught through storytelling. This book is a must for anyone working on Islamic philosophy and Sufism. M. 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 on 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 Middle Eastern and Islamic intellectual history, there has long been an assumption of decline in the eighteenth century, right before the nineteenth century, when the nahda or Arabic intellectual renaissance, began: intellectuals were caught in a period of stagnation and retrograde. Ahmad Dallal pushes back against this in Islam without Europe: Traditions of Reform in Eighteenth Century Islamic Thought (University of North Carolina Press, 2018), bringing together an intricate matrix of ideas stemming from multiple fields of knowledge. He pins this all together with the notion of reform, all the while reminding us that reform is also about tradition. He starts with Wahhabism, carefully dissecting the thought of Muhammad ibn Abdel Wahhab, and then connects it to eighteenth century responses to Wahhabism. From there on, he draws in Hadith studies, Sufism, the concept of Ijtihad in legal reasoning, and legal theory to paint a tapestry of interlaced and dynamic ideas. Overwhelmingly, Dallal demonstrates that reform was tied to giving practicing Muslims increasing control over their own faith. Beyond that, Dallal talks to us about Islamic studies, Orientalism, and modernity, elucidating why we need to bring the 18th century back into the fold of Islamic and Middle Eastern intellectual history. Ahmad Dallal is the dean of Georgetown University in Qatar. He was professor of history (2009-2017) and was the provost at the American University in Beirut (AUB) from 2009 to 2015. 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

What do the social worlds of teenage Muslim American boys look like? What issues do they grapple with and how do they think about issues that arise in their everyday lives? In his new book Keeping it Halal: The Everyday Lives of Muslim American Teenage Boys (Princeton University Press, 2017), John O’Brien answers these questions and more. An overarching theme of the book is just how ordinary and common, in a teenage sense of things, these boys’ lives are. O’Brien uses three years of ethnographic data and interviews to provide context and analysis of the lived experiences of Muslim American teenage boys. Emphasizing the culturally contested lives of these boys, O’Brien explores topics like music, dating, and balancing their religious experiences with their teenage experiences. In addition to learning about the boys’ lives, O’Brien encourages us to experience some of the broader issues that the Muslim American community deals with in everyday life. Overall, through the stories provided and accessible language and explanations, this book would be of interest to a wide audience. For Sociology specifically, this book would be a good addition to a course on religion or youth, and would be easily digested by undergraduate and a perfect addition to a graduate level course. Sarah E. Patterson is a postdoc at the University of Western Ontario. You can tweet her at @spattersearch. 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 sparkling new book, “Mysticism” in Iran: The Safavid Roots of a Modern Concept (University of South Carolina Press, 2017), Ata Anzali, Assistant Professor of Religion at Middlebury College, offers a sweeping and brilliant intellectual history of the concept of ‘Irfan in medieval, early Modern, and modern contexts. Combining a mesmerizingly layered analysis of previously unexplored manuscripts with close attention to shifting social and political contexts, Anzali shows, with dazzling nuance, the processes and dynamics that informed the institutionalization of ‘Irfan in Iran. This nimbly written book will be of considerable interest to scholars of Muslim intellectual history and Religious Studies. In this conversation, we talked about the key themes, theoretical interventions, and arguments of this book. SherAli Tareen is Assistant 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 The Republic of Arabic Letters: Islam and the European Enlightenment (Harvard University Press, 2018), Alexander Bevilacqua uncovers a different side of the European Enlightenment, at least with regards to its engagement with Arabic and Islam. Instead of polemics, he tells the story of how books and ideas moved across continents and were studied in Europe, where they were considered a serious object of engagement. He first tracks the movement of books to Europe, then the translation of Arabic’s most famous book—the Qur’an—culminating in the study of Arabic-language materials, which he refers to as the Republic of Arabic Letters. He draws on sources in multiple languages to paint a picture of a vibrant long-distance intellectual community (or the Republic of Arabic Letters) that, for a brief period before European colonial encounters, admired, rather than derided the Arab and Muslim intellectual traditions. He talks to us about the inspiration for the book, why he thinks this intellectual community was so important, and where he sees his work amidst the greater sea of scholarship. Alexander Bevilacqua is an Assistant Professor of History at Williams College. He specializes in the cultural and intellectual history of early modern Europe (ca. 1450 to 1800). He was educated at Harvard College, University of Cambridge, and Princeton University. From 2014 until 2017 he was a junior fellow in the Harvard Society of Fellows. His work has appeared in History of European Ideas, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, and Past and Present. He has edited, along with F. Clark, Thinking in the Past Tense: Eight Conversations (Forthcoming in December 2018 with University of Chicago Press) and he won the Thomas J. Wilson Memorial Prize of Harvard University Press for The Republic of Arabic Letters: Islam and the European Enlightenment. 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

Zoltan Pall‘s Salafism in Lebanon: Local and Transnational Movements (Cambridge University Press, 2018), a just published ethnographic investigation of the rise of Salafism among Lebanese Sunni Muslims is far more than a study of an ultra-conservative community in a country that is a patchwork of religious communities. Pall’s book is an examination of what fuels the rise of Sunni Muslim ultra-conservatism, its role in the larger Sunni-Shia divide in the Middle East that is in part driven by the rivalry between Saudi Arabia and Iran, and the inner workings of the funding of Salafism by charities in the Gulf that often serve the interests of governments in countries like Qatar and Kuwait. In doing so, Zoltan has made a significant contribution to academic, political and public debate about a phenomenon that governments, civil society and academia are still trying to wrap their head around. James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at Singapore’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/islamic-studies

Described as a small book about a very large book, The World in a Book: Al-Nuwayri and the Islamic Encyclopedic Tradition (Princeton University Press, 2017) by Elias Muhanna tells the story of an encyclopedia, or a universal compendium, The Ultimate Ambition in the Arts of Erudition in Mamluk Egypt, written by Shihab al-Din al-Nuwayri. It covered multiple facets of knowledge, from science to history. He talks to us about his inspiration for the book, the structure, the content, and the context of the Ultimate Ambition, its afterlife in the Muslim and the European world and the role of book history in Middle Eastern history. Elias Muhanna is the Manning Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature at Brown University. He earned his doctorate in Near Eastern Languages & Civilizations from Harvard University and has held fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies and the Whiting Foundation. His research focuses on encyclopedic literature in the Islamic world and Europe, the cultural production of the Mamluk Empire, and the problem of the vernacular in different literary traditions. Muhanna’s publications include an abridged translation of al-Nuwayri’s encyclopedia, The Ultimate Ambition in the Arts of Erudition, for Penguin Classics. He is heavily involved in the digital humanities. He edited The Digital Humanities and Islamic & Middle East Studies (De Gruyter, 2016). He is the creator of the Digital Islamic Humanities Project at Brown, a multi-year initiative that convenes an annual conference and hosts a variety of research activities. He is also a contributing writer for The New Yorker’s online edition, and his essays and criticism have appeared in The New York Times, The Nation, Foreign Policy, and other periodicals. His blog, Qifa Nabki, is a forum for intellectual exchange and debate on Levantine politics. 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

Mehrzad Boroujerdi and Kourosh Rahimkhani‘s new book, Postrevolutionary Iran: A Political Handbook (Syracuse University Press, 2017), traces the political events that mark almost four decades of revolutionary rule and includes biographies of the 2,300 most important political players in the Islamic republic. The book is certain to be a must-have reference for anyone researching post-revolutionary Iran. It provides the raw data for an understanding of political developments in Iran since the 1979 revolution and the drivers of Iranian domestic, foreign and defense policies. In doing so, the book fills a gaping hole in the literature and knowledge about post-revolutionary Iran that is crucial to any understanding of the Islamic republic. James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at Singapore’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/islamic-studies

Ramon Harvey‘s new book The Qur’an and the Just Society (Edinburgh University Press, 2017) tackles a topic as big and meaningful as the title of the book suggests. What is justice? What words does the Qur’an use to explore the meaning of justice? How did the social context of the Qur’an exist in its time as compared with later time periods? To what extent does the Qur’an give specific guidance for realizing justice, and to what extent does it give more general principles? Dr. Harvey treats these questions and others as he guides the reader through his erudite yet accessible and clearly organized monograph. He draws smoothly from numerous modern and premodern thinkers and engages closely with the Qur’anic text throughout the book; the extensive glossary also aids in the reader in making sense of the material. Given the broad relevance of justice in the Qur’an to any number of fields, the book should interest not only Islamicists and Qur’anic studies scholars, but also political scientists, scholars of exegesis more broadly, and even a general audience. Elliott Bazzano is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Le Moyne College. His research and teaching interests include theory and methodology in the study of religion, Islamic studies, Quranic studies, mysticism, religion and media, and religion and drugs. 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 his thrilling and sparkling new book, Medieval Empires and the Cultures of Competition: Literary Duels at Islamic and Christian Courts (Edinburgh University Press, 2017), Samuel England, Assistant Professor of Arabic at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, analyzes with remarkable nimbleness the interaction of literature, politics, and power in medieval imperial settings. Effortlessly traversing from Buyid Baghdad to Spain and Italy, England shows ways in which literary competition, especially in poetry, pollinated imperial visions and fissures of political sovereignty. Literature and literary duels performed in the space of the imperial court, England convincingly argues, were critical to assemblage of medieval imperial sovereignty. This finely written book will interest and delight scholars of literature, religion, politics, and history-students of Arabic will especially appreciate the copious exhibition of wonderful Arabic poetry throughout the text. SherAli Tareen is Assistant 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

Veiled Superheroes: Islam, Feminism, and Popular Culture (Lexington Books, 2017) by Sophia Rose Arjana (with Kim Fox), takes us on a riveting journey through the world of superheroes and villains from the streets of New York to Pakistan. The book is a creative, masterful, and fascinating analysis of female Muslim superheroes in popular comic books and animation. Through the use of global examples, such as Ms. Marvel, Burka Avenger and Bloody Nasreen, just to name a few, Arjana engages her readers beyond reductive discussions of the veil, sexuality, and gender to highlight the ever-complex ways in which female Muslim superheroes can help us engage constructively with ideas of Islamic feminism, the Muslim female body, intersectionality, and even notions of violence. With supernatural powers, such through the mystical arts (i.e., Sufism), or human qualities of courage and bravery, the Muslimah superheroes featured in this study capture the real and complex lives of Muslim women globally, and the vast negotiations they have to contend with. In doing so, Arjana masterfully highlights that there is no singular Islamic feminist (or just Muslim) female experience. This book is a must read for anyone interested in religion, popular culture, and gender studies, while its accessibly written style, makes it an excellent resource for teaching religious, media, and gender studies for undergraduate students. M. Shobhana Xavier is an Assistant Professor of Religion at Ithaca College. 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 (Bloomsbury Press, 2018) and a co-author of Contemporary Sufism: Piety, Politics, and Popular Culture (Routledge, 2018). 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

For many people language is a central characteristic of their social identity. In modern South Asia, the production of Urdu and Hindi as national languages was intricately tied to the hardening of religious identities. South Asian lexicographers, those folks who were most intimately working with language, were at the center of this political realignment. In Negotiating Languages: Urdu, Hindi, and the Definition of Modern South Asia (Columbia University Press, 2016), Walter N. Hakala, Associate Professor of South Asian languages and literature at the University at Buffalo, SUNY, traces the long history of the construction of Urdu as a language of cultural and national identity. Dictionaries are the key source for understanding the changing social and political landscape of South Asia. Beginning in the seventeenth century, Negotiating Languages offers an episodic genealogy of the ideological underpinnings and political consequences of dictionary production. In our conversation we discuss South Asia’s multilingual premodern literature, linguistic authority, “Urdu’s oldest dictionary,” the influence of colonial knowledge production, the changing social and material challenges in 20th century lexicographical production, British lexicographers and their relationship with local linguists, Islamicized Urdu literary culture, and questions of whether non-Muslims could sufficiently produce Urdu dictionaries. Kristian Petersen is an Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Nebraska, Omaha. 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 Germany, beginning in the 1960s, a major population shift took place. The reason for it was the German guest worker program. Due to the German ‘economic miracle,’ the country was in growing need of cheap labor, and it found it in places like Turkey. Although it was assumed that these ‘guests’ would later on move back to their home countries, they unexpectedly often stayed in Germany, founded families and became Germans. In her new book Women Between Strange Cities (Interkulturelle Stadtnomadinnen: Inszenierungen weiblicher Flanerie- und Migrationserfahrung in der deutsch-türkischen und türkischen Gegenwartsliteratur am Beispiel von Aysel Özakın, Emine Sevgi Özdamar und Aslı Erdoğan [Königshausen & Neumann, 2017]), Jannica Budde, a postdoc at Paderborn University, analyzes German-Turkish as well as Turkish contemporary literature thus shedding some light on the German-Tukish-cultural relationship. Reading works from Aysel Özakın, Emine Sevgi Özdamar and Aslı Erdoğan, she places particular emphasis on the female perspective. In Budde’s study, it becomes clear how German-Turkish and Turkish literature transcends stereotypical perceptions of Germany’s guest workers. 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 her new book, Heroes, Villains and the Muslim Exception: Muslim and Arab Men in Australian Crime Drama (Melbourne University Publishing, 2017), Mehal Krayem, a sociologist and researcher at the University of Technology Sydney, explores the representation of Arab and Muslim men in Australian film and television crime dramas. In a series of case studies, including the television show East West 101 and groundbreaking films like The Combination and Cedar Boys, Krayem investigates how race and ethnicity, religion, gender, and class intersect in contemporary Australian depictions of Arab and Muslim men. 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 her fascinating and path paving new book, Indian Muslim Minorities and the 1857 Rebellion: Religion, Rebels and Jihad (I. B. Tauris, 2017), Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst, Assistant Professor of Religion at the University of Vermont reorients our understanding of the 1857 rebellion in India, while offering a nuanced theorization of religion, religious identity, and questions of violence. The title of this book announces the key terms and conceptual pillars that sustain it throughout: religion, rebels, and jihad. The brilliance of this book lies in the way it raises and addresses a number of critical questions regarding memory, formations of religious identity, and conceptions of religion as a category through the close and energetic reading of a single event. This book is intellectual history at its fiercest. Nimbly written, it will also make an excellent text for undergraduate and graduate seminars. SherAli Tareen is Assistant 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

In today’s episode, I am joined by Joshua Parens to discuss his innovative and engaging book Leo Strauss and the Recovery of Medieval Political Philosophy (University of Rochester Press, 2016). While one may easily confuse the book with something narrow or parochial—who is Leo Strauss and of what relevance is medieval political philosophy?—our discussion proved to be anything but. In arguing against the commonly held belief that Medieval Philosophy was simply a synthesis of Greek thought with the Bible, Parens reads the works of Alfarabi and Maimonides, two of the most influential pre-modern philosophers, through the works of Leo Strauss, the foremost political thinker of the 20th century. This subtle layering makes for an exciting braided text, cross-pollination between epochs that contextualizes these thinkers on their own terms as well as genealogically. For Parens, the “theological-political problem” at the core of Leo Strauss’ work is neither strictly one of reason or of revelation but rather at the heart of metaphysics—of being and the relationship between morality and philosophy. In working out Strauss’ unfolding thinking on this problem the reader is guided through competing visions of the study of medieval philosophy and the manner in which Strauss re-centered the work of political thought from a scholastic setting to that of the Islamic world. At its heart lies the question of what Leo Strauss means by “political philosophy,” and thereby a long history from Plato through Maimonides and Alfarabi to the present day. Joshua Parens is Professor of Philosophy and Dean of the Braniff Graduate School of Liberal Arts at the University of Dallas. He edits the series Rochester Studies in Medieval Political Thought. Moses Lapin is a graduate student in the departments of History and Philosophy at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. He writes, shipwrecked, from a desert island somewhere in the Mediterranean. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/islamic-studies

Crusade and Jihad: The Thousand-Year War Between the Muslim World and the Global North (Yale University Press, 2018) is an ambitious attempt to cover, in one volume, the entire history of the relationship between the ‘Global North’—China, Russia, Europe, Britain, and America—and the Muslim world from Southeast Asia to West Africa. With more than a half a century of experience as a historian, policy maker, diplomat, peace negotiator, and businessman, William R. Polk endeavors to explain the deep hostilities between the Muslim world and the Global North and show how they grew over the centuries. Polk demonstrates how Islam, from its origins in the Arabian Peninsula, spread across North Africa into Europe, Central Asia, the Indian sub-continent, and Southeast Asia. But following the Mongol invasions of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, Islamic civilization entered a decline while Europe began its overseas expansion. Defeated at every turn, Muslims tried adopting Western dress, organizing Westerns-style armies, and embracing Western ideas. None of these efforts stopped the expansion of the West deep into the Muslim world in the late nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth century. The post-colonial Muslim world fell victim to what Polk calls a “post-imperial malaise,” typified by native tyrannies, corruption, and massive poverty. Eventually, this malaise gave rise to a furious blowback best typified by Al Qaeda and the Islamic State. William R. Polk taught at Harvard University and the University of Chicago, served on the Policy Planning Staff in the Kennedy Administration, negotiated the Egyptian-Israeli Suez ceasefire in the 1960s, and founded the Adlai Stevenson Institute of International Affairs. He has written nineteen books. Charles Coutinho holds 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. 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

In the recent past, anti-Muslim hate crimes and rhetoric have surged across America and Europe. Much of this public discourse revolves around questions of assimilation and where Muslim positions on sexuality and gender fit into national unity. In Sexagon: Muslims, France, and the Sexualization of National Culture (Fordham University Press, 2017), Mehammed Amadeus Mack, Assistant Professor of French Studies at Smith College, explores the politicization of Muslim minority sexuality in France in various cultural domains. Whether in literature, journalistic media, or activist endeavors the general portrayal of Muslims in these contexts is structured around unmodern attitudes towards sexuality. It is assumed that African and Arab minorities in France are regressive, patriarchal, and intolerant of homosexuality. Through his study of a number of cultural arenas of representation Mack demonstrates that sexual identities are often unclear, hidden, or in flux. In our conversation we discussed sexuality and French identity, aspects of non-gendered virility, homosexual clandestinity and the possibility of queer identities, girl gangs, psychoanalysis and Islam, the literary trope of the Arab Boy, cinematic representations of ethnic sexualities, the management and surveillance of sexuality, the role of pornography in the sexualization of Muslims, gay-interest publications, the continued sexual demonization of Muslims in the current social climate in France and Europe, and the literary production of Eurabia. Kristian Petersen is an Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Nebraska, Omaha. 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

Politicizing Islam: The Islamic Revival in France and India (Oxford University Press, 2017) by Fareen Parvez is a rich ethnographic analysis of Islamic Revival movements in France (Lyon) and India (Hyderabad). In her study, Parvez maps the complex ways in which Muslims, especially women, engage in religious and political activism in secular states where they are minorities. Her study challenges many notions of secularity and political Islam, particularly as it intersects with complex class identities (i.e., those who are marginalized socio-economically) both in India and France. Moving through everyday spaces, such as schools (Islamic and secular), conferences, mosques, and cafes, Parvez’s study attunes us to the intricate realities of women’s political and religious activism. This study is of great importance to scholars invested in minority and Muslim politics in India and France, as well those working on secularism, Muslim women, and political Islam, while Parvez’s ethnographic methodologies and reflections would be of great value for those working in anthropology. M. Shobhana Xavier is an Assistant Professor of Religion at Ithaca College. 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 (Bloomsbury Press, 201800) and a co-author of Contemporary Sufism: Piety, Politics, and Popular Culture (Routledge, 2018). 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

Abu Nasr Al-Farabi (c. 872 – c. 950) a philosopher who wrote on politics, metaphysics, and logic as well as mathematics, psychology, and music, was known by Jews, Christians, and Muslims as the “second teacher,” second only to Aristotle. Although little of his biography is known, we have many of his works that were instrumental in preserving and adapting the Greek philosophical heritage in an Islamic idiom in the Middle Ages. Until the work of Leo Strauss and his students, Alfarabi was largely a forgotten figure to modern scholars. Today’s podcast is a discussion with Alexander Orwin about his new book Redefining the Muslim Community: Ethnicity, Religion, and Politics in the Thought of Alfarabi (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017), a synthetic study across Alfarabi’s disparate oeuvre that weaves a thematic treatment of notions such as language, nationhood, religion, and politics with an analysis of each of his works in turn. Using the term umma (literally “nation,” although inclusive of terms like civilization or community) as a keyword, Orwin shows how Alfarabi strove to recast the Islamic umma as a community in both a religious and cultural sense. This not only provides a gateway into understanding Alfarabi’s works more broadly, but spotlights his competing loyalties to religion and philosophy. In rethinking the political thought of Plato and Aristotle and demonstrating that their vision of politics was not rendered obsolete by the Islamic faith, Alfarabi, and thereby Orwin, engages in a discourse around nationhood that precedes nationalism and comes to terms with diversity across ethnic, religious, and state boundaries. Alexander Orwin is an assistant professor of Political Science at Louisiana State University. Moses Lapin is a graduate student in the departments of History and Philosophy at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, he will be interning this summer at Yoyodyne. 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 Sufis, Salafis and Islamists: The Contested Grounds of British Islamic Activism (I.B. Tauris, 2016), Sadek Hamid explores the contours of “Islamic activism”—and indeed the meaning of this key term—in the context of the UK. Despite the specific focus, however, he also gives attention to transnational implications, especially insofar as British Muslims represent a variety of ethnic backgrounds and political influences. Hamid gives meticulous attention to the social and political histories of the groups he studies, including Hizb al-Tahrir, Young Muslims, and many others. As the title suggests, the author also surveys groups with explicit connections to Sufism and draws connections between Western streams of Sufism such as those inspired by Hamza Yusuf, Timothy Winter, and Nuh Ha Mim Keller. Among Hamid’s many strengths in his erudite work is his ability to successfully locate uniquely British experiences of Islam within the cacophony of voices that comprise the social makeup of what it means to be British and Muslim. Given the extensive sources that Hamid explores, combined with the timely questions he poses, the monograph will likely attract interest from scholars across disciplines, ranging from History and Religious Studies, to Political Science and Sociology—as well as journalists of many stripes. Elliott Bazzano is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Le Moyne College. His research and teaching interests include theory and methodology in the study of religion, Islamic studies, Quranic studies, mysticism, religion and media, and religion and drugs. 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 Enemies and Neighbors: Arabs and Jews in Palestine and Israel, 1917-2017 (Atlantic Monthly Press, 2017), Ian Black, the former Middle East Editor of the Guardian, offers a comprehensive view of the past and present of what would ultimately become known as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Drawing on a range of sources, the book aims to offer a balanced and clear narrative of a history that has become infamously contested. 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 relationship between class and religious piety represents a theme less explored in the study of modern Islam in general, and in the study of South Asian Islam in particular. In her incredibly nimble and nuanced recent book The New Pakistani Middle Class (Harvard University Press, 2017), Ammara Maqsood, Lecturer in Social Anthropology at the University of Manchester, addresses this lacunae by offering a fascinating narrative of the intersection of religion, class, and piety among the urban Pakistani middle class. With a focus on the history and present of older and the new middle-class communities in Lahore, this book charts with remarkable analytical precision, the interaction of global and local politics, and the choreography of everyday religious life among the urban middle class in Pakistan. Theoretically sophisticated, historically grounded, and ethnographically vivacious, The New Pakistani Middle Class represents a groundbreaking contribution to the study of post-colonial Muslim societies, South Asian Islam, and to the anthropology of religion and Islam. In addition to its intellectual merits, this book also reads lyrically making it eminently usable in undergraduate and graduate seminars on religion and class, Urban Studies, South Asian Studies, Islamic Studies, and Anthropology. SherAli Tareen is Assistant 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

Boko Haram is one of the most well known global terrorist organizations. They have killed thousands of people and displaced millions of West Africans. While widespread journalistic reporting on the group tries to keep up with their activities, few have placed them in a rich historical context to understand how religion and politics intersect. In Boko Haram: The History of an African Jihadist Movement (Princeton University Press, 2017), Alexander Thurston, Visiting Assistant Professor at Georgetown University, traces the origins of the jihadist group through political events, networks of Islamic learning, and the personal charisma of individual religious leaders. In his previous book, Salafism in Nigeria: Islam, Preaching, and Politics (Cambridge University Press, 2017), Thurston provides background on Salafis in Nigeria that enables us to understand Boko Haram as part of a global Salafi movement. In our conversation we discuss the Nigerian religious field, the characteristics of Salafism and its canonization, Boko Haram’s founder Muhammad Yusuf, Nigerian Muslims at the Islamic University of Medina, north/south Nigerian social and political disparities, local Salafi responses to the new leadership of Abubaker Shekau, the 2014 kidnapping of 276 girls, recent ties to ISIS, international intervention, and reflections on religious violence. Kristian Petersen is an Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Nebraska Omaha. 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

Sufism, like many terms in the study of Islam, can be difficult to define and even more difficult to handle, but Alexander Knysh, in Sufism: A New History (Princeton University Press, 2017), has produced a primer that will both challenge and reinforce many of the assumptions we’ve made in the study of Islamic mysticism. Knysh walks us through how to define Sufism, the origins of Sufism (including the influence of the Hellenic world), how texts fit into our consideration of Sufism, contemporary developments in Sufism, and more. He places this within the framework of outsiders and insiders (to Sufism), challenging us to understand better how the study of Sufism itself came into being. The entire book itself is in conversation, not simply with theoretical debates in Islamic studies and the study of religion, but also the greater field of history. 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

In his work, Western Sufism: From the Abbasids to the New Age (Oxford University Press, 2017), Mark Sedgwick maps the ideational processes that have led to the development of contemporary western Sufism. Sedgwick showcases how Neoplatonism influenced Arab philosophy and subsequently Sufism. Pre-modern Sufism then appealed to Jewish and Christian mystics, who framed Sufism as a non-Islamic tradition, in effect emphasizing its universalism. With this historical mapping Sedgwick masterfully showcases how, even in its earliest period, Sufism was engaged with by Muslims and non-Muslims, and thus the fluidities noted in western Sufism in the contemporary context is by no means unique, but rather reflective of an age-old process of textual, philosophical and mystical transmissions. Moving between questions of orthodoxy and heterodoxy, universal and Islamic, this study naturally challenges how we think and frame Sufism. This book is a must read for anyone interested in Sufism, especially in modern western Sufism. M. Shobhana Xavier is an Assistant Professor of Religion at Ithaca College. 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 (Bloomsbury Press, 2018) and a co-author of Contemporary Sufism: Piety, Politics, and Popular Culture (Routledge, 2018). 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 his marvelous new book Said the Prophet of God: Hadith Commentary Across a Millennium (University of California Press, 2017), Joel Blecher, Assistant Professor of History at George Washington University, engages with tremendous lucidity and brilliance the topic of Hadith commentaries in Muslim intellectual and social history across time and space. Traversing the pre-modern and modern periods in sites ranging from the Middle East to South Asia, this book presents in remarkable detail and with considerable nuance the intellectual, social, and material stakes of the discipline and performance of the Hadith commentarial tradition. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of Muslim intellectual history, material religion, South Asian Islam, textuality and orality, and the Hadith tradition. SherAli Tareen is Assistant 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

Connections between France and North Africa have long been shaped by colonialism, nationalism, and economics. This intercultural relationship has also been mediated through the arts. In Muslim Women in French Cinema: Voices of Maghrebi Migrants in France (Liverpool University Press, 2016), Leslie Kealhofer-Kemp, Assistant Professor of French at the University of Rhode Island, examines one population who has often been left out of these cultural formations. Kemp focuses on the representation of first-generation Maghrebi women in France in documentaries, short films, feature films, and telefilms. Her analysis revolves around filmic textual analysis and the production, audience reception, and distribution of these art forms in contemporary French society. Kemp is attuned to filmic genre conventions, narrative structures, and formal techniques that media producers and artists use to both appeal to large mainstream audiences while challenging dominant stereotypes about Muslims. In our conversation we discussed views of North Africans in French society, means for recovering voice in film, the role of religion in French cinema, the mediation of subjects in documentary films, the role of objects in voicing difference, expressing agency of women protagonists, the goals of dialogue and voiceover versus body language or non-verbal communication, and film’s ability to challenge dominant stereotypes in France. Kristian Petersen is an Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Nebraska Omaha. 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 Nation of Islam and other black nationalist groups are typically known for their male leaders. Men like the Honorable Elijah Muhammad and Minister Malcolm X or Martin Delany and Marcus Garvey are notable examples. But what about the work of black women in these groups? Ula Yvette Taylor’s new book, The Promise of Patriarchy: Women and the Nation of Islam (University of North Carolina Press, 2017), expands our knowledge of the role of black women from the Depression-era development of Allah Temple of Islam in Detroit to the formal group known as the Nation of Islam that expanded under the leadership in the 1960s and 1970s of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad. Women like Clara Muhammad, Burnsteen Sharrieff, and Thelma X Muhammad were essential to the development of the Nation of Islam’s goal of creating a black nation within the American nation. The Promise of Patriarchy shows how black women created notions of black womanhood and black motherhood that best helped them deal with the daily indignities of living in Jim Crow America. Ula Yvette Taylor is Professor and H. Michael and Jeanne Williams Department Chair in the African American Studies and African Diaspora Studies at University of California, Berkeley. Adam X. McNeil is a graduating M.A. in History student at Simmons College in Boston, Massachusetts, and received his Undergraduate History degree at Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University University in 2015. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/islamic-studies

We’ve featured a few books on fashion and the Muslim world recently, all part of an effort to re-orient the study of women in the Muslim and Arabic-speaking worlds. Elizabeth Bucar’s Pious Fashion: How Muslim Women Dress (Harvard University Press, 2017) uses three different Muslim populations, Iran, Indonesia and Turkey, to look at what Muslim women wear and how it reflects individual agency. What’s so original about Bucar’s contribution is that it emphasizes how women dress, versus simply what they wear. Bucar looks at bad style, new media, global fashion, and religious authority in an account that gives agency to the subjects. But the book isn’t simply about Muslim women, but all women and is at its best when reminding the reader how dress functions in their own society. Elizabeth Bucar is Associate Professor of Philosophy and Religion at Northeastern University. She was previously Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro. She is a religious ethicist who studies sexuality, gender, and moral transformation within Islamic and Christian traditions and communities and she received her PhD in religious ethics from the University of Chicago. Nadirah Mansour is a graduate student at Princeton Universitys Department of Near Eastern Studies working on the global intellectual history of the Arabic-language press. She tweets @NAMansour26and 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

In Across Legal Lines: Jews and Muslims in Modern Morocco (Yale University Press, 2016), Jessica Marglin skillfully narrates how Jews and Muslims navigated the complex and dynamic legal system of pre-colonial Morocco. The book, based on Marglin’s doctoral dissertation conducted at Princeton University, traces the history of a Moroccan Jewish family, the Assarafs, ultimately revealing that the boundaries surrounding the states Jewish and Islamic court systems were much more porous than previously thought. Drawing from a vast wealth of archival material from private and public collections across four continents (and in upwards of seven languages), the author shows how increased foreign intervention in this period dramatically changed how Jews engaged with Moroccan law and society. In doing so, Marglin inserts her study into major debates about legal practices and modernity taking place in the fields of North African History and Jewish History alike. Jessica Marglin is the Ruth Ziegler Early Career Chair in Jewish Studies and Assistant Professor of Religion at the University of Southern California. Robin Buller is a PhD Candidate in History at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/islamic-studies

Muslim women are often the focus of debate when it comes to public conversations about Islam. Much of this centers on feelings and assumptions surrounding an object, the veil. Rafia Zakaria, journalist and author, unravels the complex nexus of attitudes, policies, and histories revolving around this object in her fascinating new book, Veil (Bloomsbury Academic, 2017). She demonstrates how the object can serve as a moral delineator, a disciplinary measure, a signifier of goodness, or as a means to subvert or rebel social norms. Through personal narratives and detailed analysis of various social and political conditions Zakaria offers an engaging and nuanced assessment of the veil in the contemporary context. In our conversation we discussed notions of the exotic Orient, colonization, representation in photography and painting, prostitution, veiling in legal contexts, public aesthetics, violence, forms of feminism, contextual meaning-making, and much more. Kristian Petersen is an Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Nebraska Omaha. 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 her new book Pilgrimage in Islam: Traditional and Modern Practices (Oneworld Publications, 2017), Sophia Rose Arjana explores the diverse array of pilgrimage practices in the Muslim world. Pilgrimage in Islam is often synonymous with the hajj, or the pilgrimage to Mecca, but Arjana’s study deconstructs this normatively held assumption by taking her readers on a journey across various sacred spaces throughout the contemporary global context. Her itineraries in this book beautifully illuminate the ways in which mobility around the sacred varies, challenging any easy categorizations scholars and students may apply in the study of Islamic pilgrimages and sacred spaces. Her book moves us beyond sectarian binaries, notions of mystical or Sufi rituals, and gendered norms, to help us deconstruct labels that have been conventionally used by Religious Studies scholars. Arjana’s text is a valuable resource for undergraduate students, but also for graduate students, as it provides provocative case studies and theorizations on pilgrimages, spatiality, and ritual performances in Religious Studies. M. Shobhana Xavier is an Assistant Professor of Religion at Ithaca College. 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 (Bloomsbury Press, 2018) and a co-author of Contemporary Sufism: Piety, Politics, and Popular Culture (Routledge, 2018). 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

Fashion is often dismissed as trivial, but Reina Lewis‘s Muslim Fashion: Contemporary Style Cultures (Duke University Press, 2015) takes both it and what Muslims specifically wear and devotes and 300+ eye-opening pages to it. Defining it as, not a history, but “a history of several lived presents.” Largely focusing on Turkey, Western Europe, and North America, Lewis walks us through the landscape of Muslim fashion, incorporating marketing, global trends, social media, and the perspectives of those who wear the clothes themselves, Muslim women. We see how religion and identity shape what people wear, how they don’t necessarily have to even fit within the set of decisions that one makes when picking ones clothes, and how functionality is also key. Ultimately, Muslim Fashion is about the role of personal choice in how Muslim women express themselves through dress and will go far in challenging assumptions about Muslims and specifically, young Muslim women. NA 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

Normally, we feature books, but this time we’re highlighting an independent press making waves in academic works on the ancient Near East, Syriac, Islam, Jewish studies, and more: Gorgias Press. Based in New Jersey, the press has grown since its inception in 2001 to include the publication of journals, open-source projects, and countless monograph and handbook series. We talk to the founder, George Kiraz, also director of the Beth Mardutho (The Syriac Institute) about how the press came about, what goes into running such a press, the press’ philosophies, and future plans. George Kiraz himself is a tremendous scholar of Syriac and a pioneer in digital humanities, among whose many publications include The Syriac Dot and many linguistic texts. NA 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

Adam Gaiser‘s majestic new book Shurat Legends, Ibadi Identities: Martyrdom, Asceticism and the Making of an Early Islamic Community (University of South Carolina Press, 2016), treats readers to a dazzling analysis of a wide range of Shurat/Kharijite texts centered on the themes of martyrdom, asceticism, and the body. Providing a rare and sympathetic window into this often misunderstood tradition, Gaiser presents a compelling and nuanced account of ways in which discursive concepts, constructs, and narratives accumulate in a tradition overtime. In our conversation, we talked about a number of the book’s major themes including the meaning and significance of the category of Shira’, Shurat and Ibadi poetry, and intra-Kharijite contestations over the boundaries of religious identity. This beautifully written book is sure to interest and spark conversations amongst scholars of Islam, asceticism, literature, and poetry. SherAli Tareen is Assistant 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

Is there one principal avenue of exploration that could lead to the very heart of the religious experience? For David L. Weddle, professor emeritus of Religion at Colorado College, that way in is the practice of ritual sacrifice. In his new book, Sacrifice in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam (New York University Press, 2017) Weddle conducts a comparative study of the practice and the social significance of sacrifice in the three “religions of Abraham.” Weddle’s book draws extensively on theology, history, and cultural theory to view the ways in which sacrifice has shaped, and continues to shape, the cultures of these religious traditions, and he proposes ways in which the traditions can work to overcome the violent sacrificial impulses still evident in extremist theology and practice. David Gottlieb is a PhD Candidate in the History of Judaism at the University of Chicago Divinity School. His research focuses on interpretations of the Binding of Isaac and the formation of Jewish cultural memory. 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

As the basis for a major world religion, the Qur’an is one of the most influential books of all time. But when it first appeared, the Qur’an was in Arabic. Most Muslims today are not native-Arabic speakers. Bruce B. Lawrence deals with this issue of translation and more by specifically focusing on the Qur’an (or the Koran) in English in the aptly titled The Koran in English: A Biography (Princeton University Press, 2017). He goes back to the earliest English translations, which he terms the “Orientalist Koran,” by non-Muslims, then explores how Muslims themselves translated the document and how modern concerns shape contemporary interactions with the Qur’an. Translation, politics, and belief weave together a biography of the Koran in English that reflects how millions of Muslims today interact with their faith. NA 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