New Books in Islamic Studies

Amy Evrard‘s first book, The Moroccan Women’s Rights Movement (Syracuse University Press, 2014), examines women’s attempts to change their patriarchal society via their movement for equality and rights. At the center of Evrard’s book is the 2004 reform of the Family Code known as the Mudawwana, in which Moroccan women made important gains in marriage, divorce, and custody rights. Combining historical analysis of legal codes, nuanced surveys of the complicated political arena, and richly developed stories of individual women, Evrard demonstrates how women’s integration is stymied by poverty and illiteracy, as well as by nationalist and anti-modernization forces. At the same time, women activists are learning how to navigate among political and civic actors to achieve their goals, and in the process, convincing more and more Moroccan women of their rights. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/islamic-studies

Many people have described Muslims modernities as being fundamentally disrupted by individual and civilizational encounters with western society. Wether rejecting or accepting alternative modes of thinking Muslims have responded to these new challenges with increasing regularity for over 200 years. Misquoting Muhammad: The Challenge and Choices of Interpreting the Prophet’s Legacy (Oneworld Publications, 2014) focuses on one of the central tasks for Muslims in the contemporary period, namely the interpretation of scripture and tradition. Jonathan A. C. Brown, Associate Professor and Associate Director of the Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University, carefully maps out multiple Muslim interpretive strategies in order to reveal the links and legacies between the pre-modern and contemporary periods. After a detailed explanation of pre-modern schools of thought, attitudes towards scripture, and hermeneutical methods Brown tackles the fragile relationship between text, community, and reader in determining ‘Truth’ in changing circumstances. We see that very often the interpretive methods used to deal with contradictions or discerning boundaries of permissibility were the same but led to divergent answers. Brown interrogates these larger issues through numerous case studies and examples. In our conversation we only scratched the surface of this detailed book. We discussed changing norms by which scripture are judged, women led prayer, the noble lie, tradition betraying or redeeming scripture, Shah Wali Allah, the Arab Spring, Sheikh Muhammad al-Gahzali, authenticity and the use of dubious hadith, verse 4:34 and the role of courts, and the historical precedent of saying “No” to scripture. 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 gets to count as Islam? In the current political climate this question is being repeated in a variety of contexts. The tapestry of various Islamic identities is revealed in an investigation of gender. In The Crisis of Islamic Masculinities (Bloomsbury, 2014), Amanullah De Sondy, Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Miami, tackles the construction of Muslim manhood in several interpretive traditions. These forms of masculinity – both ideal & reviled – are taken across a wide spectrum of thought, from Islamist perspectives to those challenging patriarchy. Many of the discussions revolve around similar themes, most importantly family, marriage, sexuality, and veiling. Other constructions of masculinity challenge heteronormativity within Muslim identities. The Qur’an is central to many of the interpretations discussed in the book but De Sondy demonstrates that here too we are not presented with a singular and clear ideal of masculinity. Qur’anic descriptions of male prophets, including Adam, Joseph, Muhammad, and Jesus, each complicate a simple narrative of Muslim manhood. In our conversation we discuss hermeneutical strategies, feminists approaches to the Qur’an, notions of love and sexual boundaries, the Mughal poet Mirza Ghalib, gender fluidity, Sufism in South Asia, prophethood, and same-sex love. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/islamic-studies

Sarah Bowen Savant, Associate Professor at the Institute for the Study of Muslim Civilisations at the Aga Khan University in London, addresses important questions about conversion among Persian peoples from the ninth to eleventh century CE in her work The New Muslims of Post-Conquest Iran: Tradition, Memory, and Conversion (Cambridge University Press, 2013). Memory is the centerpiece of her study. In the first half of her work, Savant’s analysis of memory, known as mnemohistory, coalesces around certain “sites of memory” which can include people, such as Salman al-Farisi, places, and events, with particular attention paid to conquest (futuh) narratives. These cases demonstrate how Persian identity was woven into the framework of pre-Islamic history and early Islam. However, remembering is not the only aspect that helped shape Persian, Muslim identity; forgetting is an equally important element according to Savant. Forgetting allowed irreconcilable features of Persian identity and history to be limited. The second half of her work highlights important strategies of forgetting, such as the replacing one past with an alternative account or the use of unfavorable elements of pre-Islamic Persia. Savant’s exploration of memory and its impact upon Persian, Muslim identify helps to answer important questions about conversion in early Islam. Readers, both scholars of Islam and historians in general, will find Savant’s work illuminating. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/islamic-studies

Donald Holbrook‘sThe Al-Qaeda Doctrine: The Framing and Evolution of the Leadership’s Public Discourse (Bloomsbury, 2014)represents a significant scholarly contribution to the study of Al-Qaeda and Islamic terrorism more broadly. Through a remarkably exhaustive, longitudinal study of over 260 public statements from Ayman al-Zawahiri and Osama bin Laden, Dr. Holbrook exposes Al-Qaeda’s ideology, grievances, objectives, and inconsistencies. He brings a level of rigor to this subject which is frequently absent in “expert” studies on terrorism, having databased and coded Al-Qaeda communiques for a variety of topics and characteristics. The Al-Qaeda Doctrine will likely become the definitive scholarly monograph on the subject for many years to come. Holbrook’s work is indeed becoming more relevant every day, as ideological ruptures emerge in the jihadist community, most recently evidenced by the Al-Qaeda leadership’s furious response to the Islamic State’s newly declared caliphate. The book’s assessment of Al-Qaeda’s success – indeed its lack thereof – in propagating its message and inspiring a “vanguard” in the Muslim world is also notable; The Al-Qaeda Doctrine‘s sober analysis of this, and many other topics, is a welcome refreshment from the sometimes sensationalist treatment which this topic is prone to. I highly recommend The Al-Qaeda Doctrine to students, scholars, and practitioners alike, all of whom will glean many valuable insights from Holbrook’s unique work. I look forward to further publications by Holbrook, as well as fresh additions to Bloomsbury’s New Directions in Terrorism Studies series. 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 towering Indian Muslim poet and intellectual Muhammad Iqbal (d. 1938) is among the most contested figures in the intellectual and political history of modern Islam. Heralded by some as the father of Pakistan and by others as a champion of pan-Islam, Iqbal’s legacy is as keenly debated as it is celebrated and appropriated. In his fascinating new book The Political Philosophy of Muhammad Iqbal: Islam and Nationalism in Late Colonial India (Cambridge University Press, 2012), Iqbal Sevea, Assistant Professor of history at UNC-Chapel Hill, explores Iqbal’s political and religious thought in a remarkably nuanced and dazzling fashion. Bringing into question the tendency to approach Iqbal through the prism of constraining categories like nationalist, modernist, and pan-Islamic, Sevea convincingly shows that the dynamism of Iqbal’s thought lay precisely in how he traversed multiple intellectual and ideological registers. Iqbal’s view of the nation did not correspond to the modern notion of nationalism, Sevea argues. Through a carefully historicized and conceptually invigorating analysis of a range of Iqbal’s writings, Sevea brings into view the palimpsest of discursive reservoirs that animated Iqbal’s thought as an intellectual and as a poet. Sevea brilliantly examines and displays the complexity of Iqbal’s project of comprehensively reimagining Islam in the conditions of colonial modernity, one that contrapuntally engaged Western philosophical traditions and the canon of Muslim intellectual traditions. Carefully researched and wonderfully written, this book will be of much interest to scholars and students of Islam, South Asia, politics, and colonialism. In our conversation we talked about the problem of nationalist historiographies in the study of Iqbal and South Asian Islam, intra-Muslim debates on the interaction of religion and nationalism in colonial India, Iqbal’s agonistic relationship with modernism, his understanding of Islam and nationalism, and the political stakes of this book. 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 Henry Stubbe and the Beginnings of Islam: The Originall and Progress of Mahometanism (Columbia University Press, 2014), Nabil Matar masterfully edits an important piece of scholarship from seventeenth-century England by scholar and physician, Henry Stubbe (1632-76). Matar also gives a substantial introduction to his annotated edition of Stubbe’s text by situating the author in his historical context. Unlike other early modern writers on Islam, Stubbe’s ostensible goals were not to cast Islam in a negative light. On the contrary, he sought to challenge popular conceptions that understood Islam in negative terms, and although there is no evidence that Stubbe entertained conversion, he admits many admirable characteristics of Islam, ranging from Muhammad’s character to the unity of God. The English polymath was well versed in theological debates of his time and therefore equipped all the more to write the Originall, given the benefit of his comparative framework, which in part explains why the first portion of his text devotes itself to the history of early Christianity. Strikingly, however, it seems that Stubbe never learned Arabic, even though he studied religion with a leading Arabist of his time, Edward Pococke. Indeed, one novelty of Stubbe’s work was precisely his re-evaluation of Latin translations (of primary texts) that were already in circulation. Stubbe’s contributions to scholarship also speak to the history of Orientalism–a word that did not yet exist at Stubbe’s time–or how scholars in the “West” more broadly have approached Islam. Stubbe’s Originall offers insights into present-day Western discourses that still struggle–at times with egregious incompetence–to make sense of Islam and Muslims. In this regard, Matar’s detailed scholarly account of Henry Stubbe and his carefully edited version of the Originall remains as timely as ever. Undoubtedly, this meticulously researched book will interest an array of scholars, including those from disciplines of English literature, History, and Religious 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

Where does love come from and where will it lead us? Throughout the years various answers have been given to these questions. In Divine Love: Islamic Literature and the Path to God (Yale University Press, 2013), William Chittick, professor at Stony Brook University, responds to these queries from the perspective of the rich literary traditions of Islam. He reveals how some Muslims explained the origins, life, and goal of love through a detailed investigation of authors writing in Persian and Arabic mainly from the eleventh to twelfth centuries. For these authors, love is manifest through the relationship between God and creation in all of its various iterations. Commentary and explanation are drawn from numerous sources beginning with the Qur’an but most extensively from Rashid al-din Maybudi’s Qur’an commentary, Unveiling of the Mysteries, and Ahmad Sam’ani’sRepose of the Spirits. In our conversation we discussed the role of the Persian Muslim tradition, the cosmological roles of Adam and Muhammad, the centrality of the heart in the spiritual psychology, states and stations, the macrocosm and microcosm, and the suffering of separation. 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 Politics, Law, and Community in Islamic Thought: The Taymiyyan Moment (Cambridge University Press, 2012), Ovamir Anjum explores a timely topic, even though his focus is hundreds of years in the past. In order to present his topic Professor Anjum asks a series of foundational questions, such as: How have Muslims understood ideal government and political theology? What is the role of rulers in those politics? And what does it even mean to talk about “politics” as a category? In Anjum’s words “the relationship between Islam and politics in the classical age can neither be described as a formal divorce nor a honeymoon, but rather a tenuous and unstable separation of spheres of religious authority from political power that was neither justified in theory nor wholeheartedly accepted” (136). The “Taymiyyan Moment,” a rephrasing of the “Machiavellian Moment” comes during the life of the prodigious author, theologian, and jurist Ibn Taymiyya (1263-1328). By honing in on Ibn Taymiyya’s magnum opus, Dar’ Ta’arud al-‘aql wa-l-naql (The Repulsion of Opposing Reason and Revelation)–not a political work, per se, but a theological one–Anjum reflects on, among other things, tensions between “community-centered” and “ruler-centered” visions of politics, and how scholars before Ibn Taymiyya had understood these ideas. Based on meticulous research of primary and secondary sources, Anjum’s monograph will likely encourage new scholarship on the post-classical era, including the impact of Ibn Taymiyya’s ideas on later generations, as well as interest among scholars from a variety of disciplines, ranging from History and Religious Studies, to Political Science and Law. 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 post 9/11 era in which Muslims in America have increasingly felt under the surveillance of the state, media, and the larger society, how have female Muslim students on US college campuses imagined, performed, and negotiated their religious lives and identities? That is the central question that animates Dr. Shabana Mir‘s dazzling new book Muslim American Women on Campus: Undergraduate Social Life and Identity (University of North Carolina Press, 2014). This book was the winner of the Outstanding Book Award awarded by the National Association for Ethnic Studies. In her book, Dr. Mir engages a number of interlocking themes such as the varied and at times competing understandings of Islam among female Muslim undergraduates, the haunting legacy of Orientalist discourse and practice on U.S. college campuses, questions of religious authority among Muslim students on campus, and contradictions of pluralism in US higher education. Through a theoretically sophisticated and compelling ethnographic study focused on the college experience of female Muslim undergraduates at George Washington University and Georgetown University in Washington DC, Dr. Mir brings into view the hopes, tensions, and aspirations that mark the intersections of their religious and academic and social lives on campus. Some of the specific issues analyzed in this book include female Muslim American understandings of and attitudes towards alcohol culture on campus, clothing and the hijab, and questions of gender and sexual relations. Dr. Mir’s incredibly nuanced study shows both the diversity and complexity of the undergraduate experience for Muslim American students. This truly multidisciplinary book will be of much interest to not only scholars of Islam, American religion, gender, and anthropology, but also to anyone interested and invested US higher education. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/islamic-studies

Ronen Shamir‘s new book is a timely and thoughtful study of the electrification of Palestine in the early twentieth century. Current Flow: The Electrification of Palestine (Stanford University Press, 2013) makes use of Actor-Network Theory as a methodology to trace the processes involved in constructing a powerhouse and assembling an electric grid in 1920s Palestine. The book brilliantly shows how electrification “makes politics” rather than just transmitting it: under the auspices of British colonial government, the material processes of electrification produced and affirmed ethno-national distinctions like “Jews” and “Arabs” and the spaces they came to produce and inhabit in Palestine. The electric grid, here, “performs and enables (or disables) social formations through the physical connections it establishes and its attachments to other entities.” The episteme of separatism and the roots of what would become a partition plan were born in this context, as Shamir shows. The first part of the book (chapters 1 & 2) explores these phenomena by looking at flows of electric current to streetlights and private consumers who were lighting their homes and businesses. The second part of the book (chapters 4 & 5) looks at the attachment (or not) of the electric grid to railways, industry, and agriculture. The third chapter acts as a pivot between them, examining the processes by which the measurement and standardization of current became a potent social force, creating new divisions between areas of the city of Tel Aviv, public and private spheres, and kinds of consumers. Whether you’re interested the history of Palestine or the historical sociology of science, this is a fascinating, inspiring study well worth reading! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/islamic-studies

Scholars of Islam and historians have frequently pointed to the Miḥna, translated as ‘trial’ or ‘test,’ as a crossroad in the landscape of Islamic history. Professor John P. Turner of Colby College is among those who challenge the long held assumption that the Miḥna was a uniquely pivotal event in his work Inquisition in Early Islam: The Competition for Political and Religious Authority in the Abbasid Empire (I. B. Tauris, 2013). In his book, Turner explores issues of heresy, orthodoxy, and caliphal authority. He investigates how Muslim doxographers, a term Professor employs instead of heresiographers, defined orthodoxy not by what orthodoxy is but what orthodoxy is not. Defining the limits of orthodoxy allowed scholars and caliphs to become the arbiters of orthodoxy. This discussion sets the stage for his examination of heresy trials that took place under both the Umayyad and Abbasid caliphs. Of particular importance is the heresy trial of Aḥmad ibn Hanbal, whose name is carried on by the HanbalÄ« madhhab. Turner demonstrates that heresy trials were instituted by caliphs to consolidate their power and authority as the ‘Commnder of the Faithful’ by establishing and enforcing religious normativity. Thus, heresy trials, like the Miḥna, should not be understood as exceptional events, but one of the methods caliphs employed to solidify control of the Muslim polity. Professor Turner provides his readers with a clear and well argued revision of the understanding of the Miḥna in the history of Islam. All scholars of Islam will benefit from this work, but those with interests related to Islamic doxographies or political authority will thoroughly enjoy this book. 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 current political climate it might be easy to assume that Muslims in the ‘West’ have always been viewed in a negative light. However, when we examine the historical relationship between Muslims and their non-Muslim neighbors we find a much more complicated picture. In Muslims of Medieval Latin Christendom, c.1050-1614 (Cambridge University Press, 2014), Brian A. Catlos, professor of Religious Studies at the University of Colorado, offers the first comprehensive overview of Muslim minorities in Latin Christian lands during the Middle Ages. The book provides a narrative history of regional Muslim subjects in the Latin west, including Islamic Sicily, Al-Andalus, expansion in the Near East, the Muslim communities of Medieval Hungary, and portraits of travelers, merchants, and slaves in Western Europe. Here we find that Muslims often had great deal of agency in structuring the subject/ruler relationship due to the material and economic contributions they made to local communities. The second half of the book explores thematic issues that were shared across Muslims communities of the Mediterranean world. Catlos surveys ideological, administrative, and practical matters, including Muslim concern about legitimacy and assimilation, legal culture, and everyday social life in these multi-confessional communities. In our conversation we discussed the reign of Christian Spains, Norman rule, the adoption of Arabo-Islamic culture, Morisco hybridity, Islam in Christian imagination, the role of Muslim women, and everyday public religious life. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/islamic-studies

Are Islam and feminism inherently at odds? Is there a contradiction between piety and gender justice? This is the guiding theme for Rachel Rinaldo, professor of Sociology at the University of Virginia, in her book Mobilizing Piety: Islam and Feminism in Indonesia (Oxford University Press, 2013). After more than eighteen months of fieldwork in the contemporary nation with the highest Muslim population, Indonesia, she found that global discourses on Islam and feminism were constantly in dialogue in this local context. Mobilizing Piety is an ethnography of women activists in Jakarta during a time of democratization, popular religious resurgence, and post-9/11 anxieties and suspicions. Rinaldo examined a feminist NGO, Muslim women’s organizations, and a Muslim political party to see how piety and politics intersected. In our conversation we discussed public aspects of piety, field theory, agency, polygamy, pornography, bodily politics, religion as cultural schema, and gender. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/islamic-studies

Saudi Arabia is, for most Westerners, a mysterious place. It’s home to one of the most conservative forms of Islam around and ruled by one of the least democratic regimes in the world. Yet it’s a great friend of the liberal, democratic Western powers, the United States in particular. That’s odd. As J. Matthias Determann shows in his fascinating book Historiography in Saudi Arabia: Globalization and the State in the Middle East (Tauris, 2014), Saudi Arabia is something of a mysterious–or at least contested–place for many Saudi Arabian historians. Somewhat surprisingly, Saudi Arabian historians have enjoyed a relatively free hand in depicting the country’s past. That past, as Determann explains, is at once tribal, regional, religious, dynastic, national, and even global, depending on how you look at it. Saudi Arabian historians–and the royal family that ultimately supports them all–have looked at Saudi history through all these lenses. In their work, the seemingly monolithic country (from the Western perspective, at least) emerges as something of a pastiche of inter-penetrating historical identities. Listen in. 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 Where The Two Seas Meet (Fons Vitae, 2013), Hugh Talat Halman unpacks one of the most provocative narratives in the Islamic tradition. In the 18th chapter of the Qur’an, Surat al-Kahf (The Cave), a mysterious figure named Khidr (the “Green Man”), guides Moses through a series of seemingly criminal acts. These events turn out to be, rather, tests to try Moses’ patience, each with divine purpose and knowledge behind it. Because of Khidr’s special knowledge and status–even immortal according to some traditions–this story from the Qur’an has inspired Muslims from a variety of cultures to take interest in the relationship between Moses and Khidr as a model of discipleship, adversity, and spiritual symbolism. In his pioneering book, Halman charts the waters of literature about the story of Khidr and Moses while giving special attention to Sufi commentaries, including those of Ruzbihan Baqli, al-Qushayri, and al-Qashani. Halman also demonstrates that it was not only medieval Muslims who gravitated toward mining the spiritual wisdom of the story but also non-Muslims in the modern period, including Carl Jung, a director of a kung fu film, and others. Halman ends his monograph with a poem that synthesizes the many faces of the narrative and adds a unique personal touch to his work. Where The Two Seas Meet has undoubtedly become the authoritative English-language reference for research on the “Green Man” and provides the reader with lucid writing and ample references. Inevitably, moreover, it will also interest readers beyond the academy because of its transcultural insights and possibilities for interpretation. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/islamic-studies

When did groups in Kufa begin forming unique identities leading to the development of Shiism? Najam Haider, professor of Religion at Barnard College of Columbia University, answers this question in his book, The Origins of Shia: Identity, Ritual, and Sacred Space in Eighth-Century Kufa (Cambridge University Press, 2011). This study is a boon for those with research interests in early Shiism, or the history of Islam prior to the ninth century. In the first section of his book, Haider announces his intention to test literary narratives of the origins of Shiism: namely, if Shiism did, in fact, develop during the early 8th century and if it was the product of the merging of two distinct groups. To answer those questions he proposes to analyze the 8th-century Kufa traditions. Haider examines these traditions on the basis of their legal authorities and the composition of their narrative styles.He applies this method to three cases studies in the second section of his book: (1) the basmala in ritual prayer, (2) the use of qunÅ«t, a blessing or curse, in prayer, and (3) the prohibition of intoxicants. Each case study centers on ritual which Haider argues is a more determinative means of ascribing identity then an individual or group’s theology. Based on the results of these three case studies, Haider proposes a revised history of Shiism in his third section. Haider’s work stands out for the clarity of the questions he seeks to answer and the method he employs in doing so. Every chapter concludes with a concise summary of the major points and the entire work is filled with charts of data to help readers understand how the massive corpus of information he utilized was organized and categorized. Scholars will obviously benefit from its proposed revised history, but its readability makes it useful for undergraduates and laypersons. 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 work of Charles Darwin, together with the writing of associated scholars of society and its organs and organisms, had a particularly global reach in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Marwa Elshakry‘s new book offers a fascinating window into the ways that this work was read and rendered in modern Arabic-language contexts. Reading Darwin in Arabic, 1860-1950 (University of Chicago Press, 2013) invites us into a late nineteenth-century moment when the notions of “science” and “civilization” mutually transformed one another, and offers a thoughtful and nuanced account of the ways that this played out for scholars working and writing in Syria and Egypt. The early chapters of Elshakry’s book focus on the central role played by popular science journals like Al-Muqtataf (The Digest) in translating and disseminating Darwin’s ideas. We meet Ya’qub Sarruf and Faris Nimr, young teachers at the Syrian Protestant College who were instrumental in translating scientific works into Arabic there and, later, in Egypt. An entire chapter looks closely at Isma’il Mazhar’s work producing the first verbatim translation of Darwin’s Origin of Species into Arabic, but the book also looks well beyond Darwin to consider broader Arabic discourses on the relationship between science and society, as those discourses were shaped by engagements with the work of Herbert Spencer, and many others. Elshakry pays special attention to the ways that this story is embedded in the histories of print culture, the politics of empire, and debates over educational reform, materialism, and socialism in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and concludes with a consideration of the continuing reverberations of these issues into late twentieth century Egypt and beyond. It is a must-read for anyone interested in the entanglements of science, translation, and empire in the modern world, and it will change the way we understand the place of Arabic interlocutors in the history of modern science. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/islamic-studies

Crucifixion is one of the most widely envisioned symbols in history. So much so, that for a contemporary reader the notion almost immediately plants an image of Jesus on the cross. Sean Anthony, Assistant Professor of History at the University of Oregon, argues that an assumption of uniformity in the role of crucifixion hinders our understanding of it, which is especially true when looking at crucifixion as a cross-cultural category during the Late Antique period. In Crucifixion and Death as Spectacle: Umayyad Crucifixion in Its Late Antique Context (American Oriental Society, 2014), crucifixion is examined in the early Muslim context but placed within broader social and political tactics of late antiquity. Extreme death techniques, especially in the disciplining of religious deviants, were most often public spectacles of ritualized violence used to legitimize political leaders. Umayyad leadership used crucifixion as a ideological tool to reinforce their own political legitimacy. Anthony demonstrates how this all plays out in the cases of Abdallah ibn al-Zubayr and Zayd ibn ‘Ali. The study of crucifixion also enables us to examine the rich ways that Muslims remembered and accounted for their own personal histories. In our conversation we discussed the relationship between early Islam and late antique societies, crucifixion in the Zoroastrian setting, the treatment of the dead Muslim body, crucifixion in the Qur’an and Hadith, the public/private spheres of the body, deciphering historical sources, religious deviance, and the ironic fate of the conquered Ummayads. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/islamic-studies

Many Muslim debates regarding women are solely situated in legal or political frameworks. For example, we often find this tendency in conversations about women’s leadership in the mosque or the politics of veiling. Sa’diyya Shaikh, Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Cape Town, provides a unique approach to these discussions that puts feminist hermeneutics in dialogue with the thought of the prolific Muhyi al-Din ibn al-‘Arabi (1165-1240). In Sufi Narratives of Intimacy: Ibn Arabi, Gender and Sexuality (University of North Carolina Press, 2012) she explores contestations over embodiment and gender, spirituality and leadership, sexuality and power in order to rethink patriarchal epistemologies in contemporary Muslim discourses. She argues that contesting positions on gender in these debates are underpinned by certain assumptions about human nature, its gendering, and existence. Shaikh outlines the social and ritual consequences of spiritual (in)equality and initiates reflections on Islamic notions of the central category “human being.” Shaikh leads us through Ibn ‘Arabi’s dynamic anthropology, ontology, and cosmology and links abstract philosophical concepts with concrete daily relationships between men and women. In our conversation we discussed Islamic feminism, apophatic unsayings and hermeneutic of subversions, Ibn ‘Arabi’s interpersonal relationships with women, parallels between the macrocosm and microcosm, Muslim exegesis, notions of creation, interpretations of Adam and Eve, Jesus’ birth from the Virgin Mary, and masculine and feminine in Islam. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/islamic-studies

Zareena Grewal‘s monograph Islam is a Foreign Country: American Muslims and the Global Crisis of Authority (NYU Press, 2013), seamlessly interweaves ethnographic research with an in-depth historical perspective in order to yield an unparalleled account of American Muslims and their intellectual and spiritual journeys. Where does knowledge come from? Where does Islam come from? Can Americans find it in California, or must they travel to Egypt, or Syria? How does skin color, religious conversion, and national origin play into these queries? In order to answer these questions and many more, Grewal guides the reader through a complex history of Islam in the United States–including key institutions, important figures, and critical events–while also recounting her ethnographic research from Cairo, Damascus, and Amman. Grewal follows the stories of American youth as they travel overseas in search of something they believed could not be found domestically, yet at the same time, these students seek to return to the United States after acquiring what they set out to find. How their idiosyncratic identities and concerns play out in their respective locales offers a frame in which Grewal explores her larger questions surrounding authority, identity, and religious truth. The monograph is an example of scholarly rigor while simultaneously welcomes non-specialists to explore the challenges she puts so eloquently into words. Islam is a Foreign Country is thoroughly digestible and although with big ideas often come big words, Grewal’s prose proves inviting and absorbing, making it an absolute pleasure to read and a conversation starter for any number of audiences. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/islamic-studies

Nathan Schneider‘s monograph, God in Proof: The Story of a Search from the Ancients to the Internet (University of California Press, 2013), explores the timeless challenge of how to explain God. Are such explanations rational? Why are some attempts more popular than others? Indeed, can one really “prove” God? Isn’t it called “faith” for a reason? And what does Star Trek have to do with all of this? In addressing these questions, and many more, Schneider guides the reader through a rich land of storytelling, autobiographical reflections, and clever drawings. As the author submits in the book from its onset, don’t expect to discover which proof is right or why atheists are wrong. It turns out, in any case, that “proof” doesn’t necessarily mean what we think it means. Although proof can mean unimpeachable evidence, a proof can also be a work in progress (e.g., the proof of a text); or it can mean to tackle a challenge (e.g., to prove oneself). As Schneider convincingly argues, moreover, proofs for God have scarcely focused on mitigating doubt. They have been works of devotion and profoundly personal revelations. These proofs have also remained tied intimately to particular socio-historical contexts, but Schneider points out that despite this, the world of proofs is also a world of relationships and shared ideas in which Muslims, Jews, Christians, philosophers, and many others draw upon the ideas of one another. Schneider’s combined background in journalism and academia helps in rendering his complex and sometimes mind-boggling subject digestible to both general and scholarly audiences with polyvalent interests and beliefs about God. 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 people make sense of their scriptures when they do not align with the way they envision these texts? This problem is faced by many contemporary believers and is especially challenging in relation to passages that go against one’s vision of a gender egalitarian cosmology. Ayesha Chaudhry, professor in the Department of Classical, Near Eastern and Religious Studies and the Institute for Gender, Race, Sexuality and Social Justice at the University of British Columbia, examines one such passage from the Qur’an, verse 4:34, which has traditionally been interpreted to give husbands disciplinary rights over their wives, including hitting them. In Domestic Violence and the Islamic Tradition: Ethics, Law, and the Muslim Discourse on Gender (Oxford University Press, 2013) Chaudhry offers a historical genealogy of pre-colonial and post-colonial interpretations of this verse and their implications. Through her presentation she offers portraits of the “Islamic Tradition” and how these visions of authority shape participants’ readings of scripture. In our conversation we discuss the ethics of discipline, idealized cosmologies, marital relationships, legal interpretations, Muhammad’s embodied model, Muslim feminist discourses, effects of colonialism, and the hermeneutical space between modernity and tradition. 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 almost every prison movie you see, there is a group of fanatically religious inmates. They are almost always led by a charismatic leader, an outsized father-figure who is loved by his acolytes and feared by nearly everyone else. They’re usually black Muslims, but you also see the occasional born-again Christian gang. They promise salvation and, of course, protection. And they are scary. But what’s religious life in prison really like? In order to find out, the intrepid and brave religious scholar Joshua Dubler actually moved into a prison. He lived among the inmates and those clerics who had devoted their lives to bringing them spiritual comfort. The picture he paints in his wonderful new book Down in the Chapel: Religious Life in an American Prison (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2013) is nothing like the one you see on TV or in the movies. In fact, it’s so irreducibly complex that it almost defies description. The spirituality he finds behind bars is adapted to the harsh realities of prison life and the personalities of the religious (and quasi-religious) inmates themselves. Dubler reminds us that churches–of whatever type and wherever found–are made of people in all their idiosyncratic variety. Listen in to our fascinating and lively discussion. 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 is the interplay between the physical human body and the body politic? This question is at the heart of Ellen J. Amster‘s Medicine and the Saints: Science, Islam, and the Colonial Encounter in Morocco, 1877-1956 (University of Texas Press, 2013). In this pioneering, interdisciplinary study, Professor Amster explores the French campaign to colonize Morocco through medicine. It is through medicine and medical encounters that Amster reveals competing ideas of “scientific paradigm (cosmologies), knowledge systems (hygiene and medical theory), and the technologies of physical intervention (therapeutics)” (p. 2) between the colonizing French positivists and the Moroccan populace. Amster’s breadth of expertise in the fields of medical history, Moroccan/North African history, the history of French colonization, the study of Islam and Sufism, anthropology, sociology, and philosophy is equally matched to the depth in which she explores these topics throughout the six chapters of her work. Each chapter explores a unique encounter, or more often clash, between the French and the Moroccan. From Sufi saints in the first chapter to government hygiene initiatives in the fourth, Amster is meticulous and exhaustive with her source material. Even more distinctive is her use of oral narratives. Scholars interested in the role of women as medical practitioners will greatly benefit from Amster’s exploration of the qabla (midwife) in the fifth chapter. Gradually, Amster demonstrates that French attempts to “modernize” Morocco were in fact the very seeds that led to Moroccan ideas of independence and nationhood. This work will have a tremendous impact on many fields and hopefully give rise to further interdisciplinary work in the fields of Islam, North African and Moroccan history, and medicine. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/islamic-studies

If you’re going to teach a broadly themed survey course, you’ll probably need to assign some readings. One option is to assemble one of those photocopied course readers, full of excerpts taken from different sources. However, what you gain in flexibility may be sacrificed in coherence of presentation. A textbook produced by a single author might be more nicely packaged for student consumption, but then, how many different things can one author be an expert in? The best of both approaches would be found in a single-volume collection of essays, written by experts in their respective fields, newly commissioned for the volume in question, and all presented according to a shared format. Karen Pechilis and Selva J. Raj‘s South Asian Religions: Tradition and Today (Routledge, 2012) provides just such a collection, designed with both faculty and students in mind. Contributors to the book include Vasudha Narayanan, M. Whitney Kelting, Sunil Goonasekera, Nathan Katz, M. Thomas Thangaraj, Karen G. Ruffle, Joseph Marianus Kujur, and Pashaura Singh. In this interview, editor Karen Pechilis discusses her decisions behind the form and content of the book, shares her experiences using the book in one of her own classes, and unexpectedly turns the tables on the interviewer regarding how he came to be interested in such things. This podcast is dedicated to the memory of Selva J. Raj. 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 book, The Fatigue of the SharÄ«’a (Palgrave, 2012), Ahmad Atif Ahmad explores a centuries-old debate about the permanence, or impermanence, of God’s law, and guidance, in the lives of Muslims. Could God’s guidance simply cease to be accessible at some point? Has such a “fatigue” already taken place? If so, how could one know for sure? What kinds of Muslims, and non-Muslims, have contributed to this debate? Ahmad ambitiously tackles these questions, and many more, in his meticulously researched and provocative monograph. In order to interrogate his topic, he surveys the many camps of the debate and also defines and problematizes key words such as sharÄ«’a, ijtihād, and madhhab. Although the text relies on a familiarity with the Islamic legal tradition, Ahmad’s style of writing, which constantly asks readers to reflect on key questions, allows even the uninitiated to benefit from and reflect on what it could mean for God’s guidance to fatigue. As a result of recounting competing angles of the debate, Ahmad leaves with the reader with enduring questions, rather than simple answers, regarding how or if the sharÄ«’a will indeed come to an end. If the legal schools, for example, arose at different times and in different contexts, why would they all meet a common future? As political struggles in the Middle East, North Africa, and the greater Muslim world continue, Ahmad’s timely book will likely interest not only Islamic studies scholars and legal historians, but also journalists, policy makers, and political scientists. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/islamic-studies

Several studies about Islam in Asian contexts highlight the pluralistic environment that Muslims inhabit and interplay of various religious traditions that color local practice and thought. In The Festival of Pirs: Popular Islam and Shared Devotion in South India (Oxford University Press, 2013) we are given a first hand account of the devotional life and dynamic setting that produces one such example. Afsar Mohammad, professor at the University of Texas at Austin, documents public rituals and devotional stories revolving around a Sufi master, Kullayappa, and the 300,000 pilgrims from throughout South Asia who travel to the small village of Gugudu. In The Festival of Pirs we are shown how the events occurring during the month of Muharram and the narrative of the Battle of Karbala are transformed into a meaningful local frame. Here, the importance of the ‘local’ becomes clear while both Muslims and Hindus participate in these events. In fact, participants identify their practices as Kullayappa devotion (bakhti) instead of the more singular categories we are more familiar with, such as Muslim and Hindu. Mohammad also examines the tensions between these practices and the reformist activity of Muslims following what they call ‘True’ (asli) Islam. In our conversation we discussed frictions between mosque and shrine cultures, textual authority, the role of Telugu language, local and localized Islam, political sermons, public rituals, temporary asceticism, and religious identity. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/islamic-studies

Rebecca Williams‘ book Muhammad and the Supernatural: Medieval Arab Views (Routledge, 2013) is one of the newest additions to the Routledge Studies in Classic Islam series. Despite the Qur’anic proclamation that the only “miracle” which served as proof of Muhammad’s propethood was the Qur’an itself, miracles and supernatural events have been ascribed to Muhammad in numerous Islamic literary and intellectual genres. Professor Williams, of the University of South Alabama, delivers a unique and fresh look at the supernatural in Islam. Restricting her analysis to the works of Qur’anic exegesis and the biography, she focuses on four events in the life of Muhammad. Muhammad’s conception, his first occasion of public preaching, a vignette concerning a warning sent by one of Muhammad’s followers to the residents of Mecca prior to an attack, and a failed assassination attempt upon Muhammad’s life each contain some type of supernatural occurrence. Each of these events is connected to an important theme for Muslims in the medieval era, sex, politics, betrayal, and wrath, respectively. Professor William’s fascinating comparative investigation of the treatment of these supernatural occasions demonstrates important similarities and differences between these two scholars. Moreover, the reader becomes conscious of the milieu in which each scholar constructed their texts. While this is a significant contribution to the field of the study of Islam, the topics addressed are of great benefit to scholars of literature and folklore and its contents are accessible to a wide spectrum of readers. 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 brilliant new book, The Canonization of Islamic Law: A Social and Intellectual History (Cambridge UP, 2013), Ahmed El Shamsy, Assistant Professor of Islamic Studies at the University of Chicago, explores the question of how the discursive tradition of Islamic law was canonized during the eighth and ninth centuries CE. While focusing on the religious thought of the towering Muslim jurist Muhammad b. Idris al-Shafi’i (d. 820) and the intellectual and social milieu in which he wrote, El Shamsy presents a fascinating narrative of the transformation of the Muslim legal tradition in early Islam. He convincingly argues that through al-Shafi’i’s intervention, a previously mimetic model of Islamic law inseparable from communal practice made way for a more systematic hermeneutical enterprise enshrined in a clearly defined scriptural canon. Through a rich and multilayered analysis, El Shamsy shiningly demonstrates how and why this process of canonization came about. Written in a remarkably lucid fashion, this groundbreaking study will delight and benefit specialists and non-specialists alike. In our conversation, we talked about the shift from oral to written culture in early Islam, the contrast between the normative projects of Malik and al-Shafi’i, al-Shafi’i’s theory of language, the social and political reasons for the success of his legal theory, and the transmission of al-Shafi’i’s thought by his students. 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 Powerful Ephemeral: Everyday Healing in an Ambiguously Islamic Place (University of California Press, 2011), Carla Bellamy explores the role of saint shrines in India, while focusing on a particular venue known as Husain Tekri, or “Husain Hill.” Through her in-depth ethnographic research, Bellamy’s monograph provides vivid description and analysis of the site as well as first-person narratives of pilgrims in order to offer a dynamic portrayal of the shrine complex. Bellamy shows how lines between religious communities are often fluid rather than fixed. She also problematizes notions of so-called spirit possession, interrogates the metaphysical power of frankincense, and articulates myriad perspectives of what healing might mean for those who visit Husain Tekri and participate in its rituals. Bellamy’s rich ethnography should appeal to numerous audiences, including those interested in South Asia, shrine culture, Islam, Indian religion, and Sufism. 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 should one understand Islamic law outside of its application? What happens when we think about religious jurisprudence theoretically? For medieval Muslim scholars this was the field where one could enumerate the meaning and purpose of Islamic law. But to the uninitiated these justifications for legal thinking are submerged in rote repetition of technical language and discourses. Luckily for us, Rumee Ahmed, professor in the Department of Classics, Near Eastern and Religious Studies at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, dives into the depths of various legal theory manuals to draw narrative understandings of shari’a to the surface. In Narratives of Islamic Legal Theory (Oxford University Press, 2012), Ahmed examines two formative contemporaneous jurists from the Hanafi school of law to determine the relationship between law and ethics through legal discourses. He focuses on the nature and meaning of the Qur’an, the role of the sunnah (the Prophetic example), and the use of considered opinion in structuring legal boundaries. Ultimately, he views their positions not merely as academic debates over the minutia of religious opinions and injunctions but as ritual observance, which formulates a world ‘as if’ it were ideal. In our conversation we discuss abrogation, punishment, salvation, Abraham’s sacrifice, hadith transmission, Peircean notions of abduction, religious law, stoning, adultery, the role of scholars, and contemporary calls for reform. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/islamic-studies

Al-Qāḍī al-Nu῾mān (d. 363/974) was the primary architect of Ismā῾īlÄ« jurisprudence which was formed under the Fatamids. The Early History of Ismaili Jurisprudence (I. B. Tauris, 2013) provides an English translation and edited Arabic edition of a work held to be written by al-Nu῾mān, the Minhāj al-farā’iḍ, a brief tract on inheritance law. However, author Agostino Cilardo, Professor at the ‘Orientale’ of Università degli Studi di Napoli (Naples), offers his readers much more in this book. The first half of this work explores critical questions concerning the development of Ismā῾īlÄ« jurisprudence which includes synopses of the theories concerning the progression and originality of Ismā῾īlÄ« jurisprudence. This is followed by an analysis of the Minhāj alongside four other works penned by al-Nu῾mān: Kitāb al-iqtiṣār, Kitāb al-yanbū῾, Mukhtaá¹£ar al-āthār, and Da῾ā’im al-Islām. This study allows Professor Cilardo to draw a number of conclusions about the work itself, the maturation of Ismā῾īlÄ« jurisprudence, and how Ismā῾īlÄ« law (fiqh) compares to other Shī῾ī and the Sunni legal traditions, in terms of legal inheritance. The book is well written and meticulous in its organization. Scholars and students of Islam will find this work invaluable, and it is a good tool for those interested in both jurisprudence and Ismā῾īlÄ« 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

How does colonial power, both discursive and institutional, transform the normative boundaries and horizons of religious identities? Teena Purohit, Assistant Professor of Religion at Boston University, examines this question in The Aga Khan Case: Religion and Identity in Colonial India (Harvard University Press, 2012). This book is clearly written and carefully researched straddling multiples fields and disciplinary approaches. The crux of the study is the transformation of Khoja Isma’ili identity in colonial India. The title refers to a case in 1866 lodged by the Khojas of Bombay against the then Aga Khan over the ownership and control of their property. However, this ostensible property dispute spiraled into a much larger debate over religion and religious identity. Through a dazzling analysis of novel historical and textual archives, Professor Purohit demonstrates that the Aga Khan case of 1866 indelibly transformed the nature and boundaries of Isma’ili religious identity in South Asia, often in ways that remain highly relevant even today. In our conversation, we discussed the major themes and arguments of the book. We also talked about the broader theoretical and conceptual interventions of this book in the fields of Religion, Islamic Studies, and South Asian 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

What is the relationship between philosophy, mysticism, and scripture in the Islamic tradition? Mohammed Rustom, Associate Professor of Islamic Studies at Carleton University, has been thinking about this question for years. His intellectual curiosity is thoroughly explored in his book The Triumph of Mercy: Philosophy and Scripture in Mulla Sadra (SUNY Press, 2012). Rustom introduces us to Muhammad b. Ibrahim al-Shirazi (d. 1640), better known as Mulla Sadra, and his theory of scriptural hermeneutics developed most explicitly in his book, The Keys to the Unseen (Mafatih al-ghayb). Through his reading of Mulla Sadra Rustom was trying to gather what kind of interpretive framework constituted a philosophical approach to the Qur’an. In The Triumph of Mercy, the Tafsir Surat al-Fatiha, a commentary on the opening chapter of the Qur’an, is used as a touchstone for exploring Mulla Sadra’s metaphysics, cosmology, theology, and soteriology. Through this study we see how Mulla Sadra was indebted to earlier figures in the Islamic intellectual tradition, such as Suhrawardi (1154-91) and Ibn al-Arabi (d. 1240). In my conversation with Rustom we discuss Islamic philosophy, the tafsir tradition, practical hermeneutics, God’s Essence and Attributes, the Muhammadan Reality, notions of existence or being, the significance of praise, and ideas about salvation, punishment, and hell. Our conversation also demonstrates how contemporary intellectual traditions are built through Rustom’s clear admiration for his mentors, such as Todd Lawson, William Chittick, and Michael Marmura. 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 book Animals in the Qur’an (Cambridge University Press, 2012), Sarra Tlili carefully addresses a complex issue. What does the Qur’an say about non-human animals? And their relationship to humans? Tlili begins her study by discussing conceptions of animals in various religions, in addition to Islam, and not just “Abrahamic” traditions. The remainder of the book focuses on the Qur’an, its presentation of animals, and a range of exegetical literature that treats the topic of animals in the Islamic holy text. Tlili also ventures into Arabic literature more broadly. She adroitly demonstrates that classical Muslim scholars did not understand non-human animals as existentially inferior, and notes societal shifts in the modern world with reference to anthropocentrism and privileging human existence. Tlili also provides a comprehensive appendix that lists a host of qur’anic names for animals, demonstrating the significance of her topic as well as the lexical challenge that scholars face. Sarra Tlili’s articulate prose reads smoothly, moreover, and gives the reader an incentive to explore this fascinating text. The monograph should interest specialists and non-specialists alike as it provides an accessible window into the rich world of Animals in the Qur’an. 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 does the everyday experience of Muslim minorities look like? We have often heard about what Muslims deal with in the West. But what about Muslim minorities in the East? This was one of the questions Paul O’Connor, professor in the Anthropology department at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, explores in the cosmopolitan city of Hong Kong. In Islam in Hong Kong: Muslims and Everyday Life in China’s World City (Hong Kong University Press, 2012), O’Connor provides an ethnography of everyday life for the various Muslim communities in this modern city. He outlines institutions and organizations in the religious landscape of permanent Muslim minority communities. He explores the meaning of various spaces in the urban environment, such as home, school, mosque, and public spaces like malls or the Chungking Mansions. He also examines the dynamics of food and language in shaping everyday practices and relationships. In our conversation we discuss changes occurring after the end of colonial power, multilingual opportunities, halal food, religious and secular education, racism, Indonesian foreign domestic workers, Muslim youth use of urban public and online spaces, Muslim minority experiences in East and West, and everyday hybridity. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/islamic-studies

A top five finalist for the Best First Book in the History of Religion Award, Damascus after the Muslim Conquest (Oxford University Press, 2011) by Nancy Khalek, professor of Religious Studies at Brown University, is a study of the city of Damascus, the seat of power for the Umayyad dynasty. More specifically, this book explores the interaction between the recently arrived Muslim Arab rulers and the Byzantine-Christian peoples who made up the majority of the population in Syria. Khalek employs both traditional historical texts, such as Ibn ‘Asākir’s TārÄ«kh Dimashq, along with art and architecture from the region. She displays a mastery of both the Muslim and Christian sources, discerning the value of their historicity but highlighting the narrative and iconographic significance that can be extrapolate from those sources. During her study of the stories and art, the narratives and iconography reveal that the Muslim and Christian cultures of Syria were in a type of dialogue with each other. She takes care to avoid stating this was a replacement one culture or one borrowing from anther, but instead wishes to portray a blending of these cultures; a blending whose legacy lived on for centuries. Khalek’s work is truly a significant contribution to the field of Islamic Studies and an indispensable interdisciplinary study for both its use of a variety of lesser known source material and its re-imagining of Umayyad history in Syria. 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 Kevin Jaques‘ work, Ibn Hajar: Makers of Islamic Civilization (I. B. Tauris, 2013), focuses on the life of one of the most eminent Muslim scholars, Ibn Ḥajar al-‘AsqalānÄ« (d. 852/1449). Jaques provides his readers with a concise yet intimate biography of this great scholar based on the accounts of his students, chiefly the al-Jawāhir of al-SakhāwÄ«, and works penned by Ibn Ḥajar himself. Beginning life as an orphan, Ibn Ḥajar rose to the most prominent academic position as the chief Shāfi‛ī judge of the Egyptian MamlÅ«k system. His accomplishment made all the more remarkable as he had to contest with countless political machinations and personal tragedies including the death of many of his children. While many of Ibn Ḥajar’s contemporary’s rose and fell due to their inability to successfully navigate the ever changing political landscape, Jaques ascribes Ibn Ḥajar’s longevity and lasting legacy to his enchanting personality, religious devotion, and inimitable acumen; qualities often ignored or downplayed by social historians studying the political intrigues of MamlÅ«k society. Jaques discusses the significance of Ibn Ḥajar’s historical and biographical texts, such as the Inbā’ al-ghumr bi-anbā’ al-‘umr and al-Durar al-kāmina, but he devotes much time to Ibn Ḥajar’s massive commentary on al-BukhārÄ«’s Ṣāḥīḥ, Fatḥ al-bārÄ«. The study of ḥadÄ«th became Ibn Ḥajar’s way to combat personal losses and the constant threat of plague; phenomena which he believed were not occasions of Divine retribution for the transgressions of the community. Excellent in its composition and structure, Makers of Islamic Civilization: Ibn Ḥajar is a book which will benefit both the novice and expert in the study of Islam. 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 book Free to Learn: Why Unleashing the Instinct to Play Will Make Our Children Happier, More Self-Reliant, and Better Students for Life (Basic Books, 2013), Peter Gray proposes the following big idea: we shouldn’t force children to learn, rather we should allow them to play and learn by themselves. This, of course, is a radical proposal. But Peter points out that the play-and-learn-along-the-way style of education was practiced by humans for over 99% our history: hunter-gatherers did not have schools, but children in them somehow managed to learn everything they needed to be good members of their bands. Peter says we should take a page out of their book and points to a school that has done just that: The Sudbury Valley School. (BTW: Peter has some very thoughtful things to say about the way standard schools actually promote bullying and are powerless to prevent it or remedy it once it’s happened. Listen in.) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/islamic-studies

Justin Jones‘ book, Shi’a Islam in Colonial India: Religion, Community and Sectarianism (Cambridge University Press, 2012) is all about Lucknow, and colonial India, and Shia Islam – and the links and interlinks between these and the outer world. Jones’ is a fascinating study, that draws upon English, Persian and Urdu sources, official and otherwise, to detail a narrative of Shi’ism in Lucknow after the deposition of its nawabs – who had done more than most to foster a Shi’ite ‘culture of governance’ – down to today. 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 famous Abu’l-Qasim al-Qushayri (d. 465/1072) is well known as one of the most influential figures in the formative period of Sufism. He was part of a network of prominent Sufis in Nishapur that were shaping the competing forms of spirituality during the eleventh century. Due to this noteworthy role in Sufism al-Qushayri’s work has rarely been examined within the contexts of the concurrent and intimately connected traditions with which he was also engaged. Martin Nguyen, Assistant Professor in the Religious Studies Department at Fairfield University and founder of the great site Islamicana, has meticulously reconstructed the nexus of al-Qushayri’s intellectual field through a close examination of his Qur’an commentary, Lata’if al-isharat (Subtleties of the Signs). In Sufi Master and Qur’an Scholar: Abu’l-Qasim al-Qushayri and the Lata’if al-isharat (Oxford University Press, 2012), part of the Oxford Qur’an series in association with The Institute of Ismaili Studies, Nguyen draws al-Qushayri’s legal training in the Shafi’i madhhab and his theological positioning the Ash’ari school to the surface. He also demonstrates that al-Qushayri had a continuing exegetical corpus and was long committed to Qur’anic commentary. As the final iteration of his tafsir, the Lata’if points to al-Qushayri’s alignment with a Nishapuri collective of exegetical hermeneutics. Some of the various issues Nguyen’s close reading explores include muhkam and mutashabih (clear and ambiguous) Qur’an verses, naskh (abrogation), the ascension narrative (Q. 53.1-18) comparing al-Qushayri’s Kitab al-Mi’raj and the Lata’if, the disconnected letters in the Qur’an (al-huruf al-muqatta’a), the narrative of Job, anthropomorphism, and the Master and aspirant (Shaykh and murid) relationship. In our conversation we also discussed the notion of tradition, exploring archives and manuscripts, composition and audience, attribution, exoteric versus esoteric commentaries. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/islamic-studies

Patrick Dunleavy is the author of The Fertile Soil of Jihad: Terrorism’s Prison Connection (Potomac Books, 2011). He provides us with a fascinating insight into the radicalization process within the prison system. This is a sensitive topic but Dunleavy does not provide a political commentary on radicalization or Islam but rather acknowledges that the process can occur and gives us a detailed recounting of one such group within the New York Correctional system. He discusses a few key characters and how they ended up in prison and the circumstances that led to their participation in radical thought. The most interesting parts of the book for me were the methods of prison life that aided the process; the ability to communicate with the outside world and the massaging of internal security routines to allow interaction and coordination with others inside the system. This is not a morality play, but rather a description of a process. We can certainly learn a lot through books such as these that reduce our naivety about the ingenuity of prison inmates who have a lot of time to think and experiment with their immediate environment. Radicalization is a serious issue but for me this was a book more about the world of incarceration than terrorism. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/islamic-studies

Many academics, especially in the aftermath of September 11th, have had to become a public authority on Islam. This is largely due to the ongoing negative portrayal of Muslims in the media and the numerous misconceptions individuals derive from these portraits. Others have noted some of the consequences of this new call many Islamicists choose to answer but in this new volume, Theorizing Islam: Disciplinary Deconstruction and Reconstruction (Equinox, 2012), the types of scholarship scholars of Islam produce are put under the microscope. In this book, Aaron Hughes, professor in the Department of Religion and Classics at the University of Rochester, does not reflect on how Muslims understand the boundaries of their tradition but offers a study of the study of Islam. Overall, Hughes contends that scholars of Islam working in Religious Studies Departments generally reproduce apologetic portraits of Islam that do not effectively demonstrate the spectrum of Muslim perspectives. For Hughes, the result is that the complicated relationship between Islamic and Religious Studies is never resolved and Islamicist continue to remain relegated to their own quarter of the field and avoid contributing to larger ongoing discourses. The provocation introduced in Theorizing Islam is a call for a more sophisticated approach to the academic study of Islam, which accounts for critical theory and methodology. In our conversation we discuss contemporary presentations of Muhammad’s life, how research is affected when stepping into the public discourse about Islam, the rhetorical dichotomy of culture and religion, orientalism, historicity versus redaction, institutional and academic affiliation, and when the academic study of religion work best. 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 2005, Amina Wadud led a mixed-gender congregation of Muslims in prayer. This event became the focal point of substantial media attention and highlighted some of the tensions within the Muslim community. However, this prayer gathering was the culmination of a series of events and embodied several ongoing intra-Muslim debates. In American Muslim Women, Religious Authority, and Activism: More Than a Prayer (University of Texas Press, 2012), Juliane Hammer, Professor of Islamic Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, outlines the circumstances leading up to the prayer event and employs it as point of convergence to explore the multiple discourses surrounding Muslim gender issues. The debates following the prayer fell into two discursive frameworks, legal and symbolic. Hammer explores these themes through a broader body of sources written by American Muslim women both in relation to exegetical projects or legalistic frameworks leading towards gender equality or human rights. While gender remains central to the arguments of the book Hammer uses this subject to examine various issues related to contemporary Islam, including participation, leadership, law, media, and self-representation. In our conversation, we discuss the disintegration of traditional modes of authority, “progressive” Muslims, embodied tafsir, feminism, the permissibility and validity of women lead prayer, the hijab, book covers, mosques, networks, Asra Nomani, and Amina Wadud, but are only able to scratch the surface of this wonderful book. 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 does a wedding in Karbala in the year 680 have to do with South Asian Muslims today? As it turns out, this event informs contemporary ideas of personal piety and social understanding of gender roles. The battlefield wedding of Qasem and Fatimah Kubra on 7 Muharram is commemorated annually by Hyderabadi Shi’a Muslims. In Gender, Sainthood, and Everyday Practice in South Asian Shi’ism (University of North Carolina Press, 2011), Karen Ruffle, Assistant Professor of History of Religions and Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of Toronto, explores the relationship between devotional literature and ritual practice in the formulation of social consciousness and embodied ethics. She accomplishes this task through great ethnographic detail and deep investigation into a rich literary tradition of devotional hagiographical texts. Ruffle argues that hagiography when enacted through contemporary ritual performances establishes typologies of Shi’i sainthood. Altogether, these localized models of ethics and gendered normativity reflect the realities of the religiously plural geographies Hyderabadi Shi’a Muslims inhabit. In our conversation, we discuss annual mourning assemblies, Husaini ethics, imitable sainthood, gender roles, martyrdom and kinship, the relationship between texts and performance, The Garden of the Martyrs, vernacular and cosmopolitan Islams, sectarian affiliation and religious identity, and the homogenization of Shi’ism. 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 Qur’an is filled with stories. It chronicles the lives of prophets, the stories of believers and non-believers, and lays out the creation of the cosmos. However, the Qur’an’s narrative qualities are often overlooked. Recently, there has been an increasing turn to literary models for approaching scripture by academics. Whitney S. Bodman, Professor of Comparative Religion at Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary, explores the narrative of Iblis in his new book, The Poetics of Iblis: Narrative Theology in the Qur’an (Harvard University Press, 2011). Iblis was a character who refused to bow to Adam and obey God’s command and has been associated with Satan. Most post-Qur’anic narratives of Iblis characterize him as the embodiment of evil. However, other texts, especially Sufi literature, describe him as a staunch monotheist who chose to follow the will of God rather than the command of God. In The Poetics of Iblis, Bodman analyzes each of the seven Qur’anic versions of the his story and explains the characteristics of these renderings through various mythic tropes. Thematic intertexuality, audience knowledge repertoire, and structural composition of Qur’anic chapters all help formulate the meaning of each retelling of the Iblis story. Through a reader-response approach to the literary text of the Qur’an Bodman concludes that Iblis ranges from a tragic character to a foil of humanity, with various meanings in between. In our conversation we discuss the theology of Evil in Islam, the relationship between reader and text, the nature of Qur’anic exegesis, and how some modern authors adapt the Iblis character to comment on contemporary society. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/islamic-studies

Three years ago I travelled overland with my wife from Victoria Falls through Zambia, Malawi, Mozambique and Tanzania. It felt like we were on a real adventure. Having just read Steve Kemper‘s excellent book Labyrinth of Kingdoms: 10,000 miles through Islamic Africa (Norton, 2012) about the real explorer, Heinrich Barth, I now feel like our trip was little more adventurous than a trip to the shops to buy some milk. Steve’s book brings home what an extraordinary feat a 19th-century expedition really was. The 10,000 miles that Barth covered took him over five years, from Tripoli down across the Sahara to Lake Chad, and then through the Sahel to Timbuktu. His passage took him through kingdoms, entrepot states and vast areas patrolled by ruthless bandits. The story is an insight into what really lay in those blank bits on European maps of the time – often everything in Africa other than the coast and a couple of rivers. These areas, far from being blank, teemed with life. Steve does a terrific job in documenting the various places that Barth travelled through, the difficulties he faced, the colourful characters he came across and the different ways in which lives were lived. There is banditry, slavery, wealth, poverty and wonder, and the book also gives an invaluable insight into the mammoth logistical tasks associated with embarking on an expedition. The central question that Steve puts forward is why Barth is not feted as one of the great men of this Age of Exploration, along with Speke, Burton, Livingstone and Stanley. By the end of the book you’re left pondering exactly the same question. It’s a book that I heartily recommend – but first have a listen to the interview! PS Steve Kemper is @stevekemper on Twitter and his website. Oh, and you might also want to follow me at @npw99 and NBN at @newbooksnetwork and @newbooksafrica 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 new edition to Islam and Human Rights: Traditions and Politics (Westview Press, 2012), Ann Elizabeth Mayer analyzes the complex issue of international human rights standards in Muslim countries. In the book’s preface, Dr. Mayer says that it could more accurately be titled “A Comparison of Selected Civil and Political Rights Formulations in International Law and in Actual and Proposed Human Rights Schemes Purporting to Embody Islamic Principles, with a Critical Appraisal of the Latter with Reference to International Law, Evolving Islamic Thought, and Relevant State Practice in the Middle East.” Throughout the book she makes that comparison in a way that is detailed, yet still easily approachable by someone new to the topic. In this 5th edition of the book she addresses increased pressures for human rights brought on by the Arab Spring, the efforts of Islamic regimes to use the human rights debate to their advantage, and the issue of the human rights of sexual minorities in the Middle East. Dr. Mayer’s book describes not only the history and evolution of human rights under Islamic law, but also addresses how these developments might continue in the future. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/islamic-studies

One of the best things about co-hosting New Books in STS is the opportunity to discover books like this one. Sherine Hamdy has given us something special in Our Bodies Belong to God: Organ Transplants, Islam, and the Struggle for Human Dignity in Egypt (University of California Press, 2012). Framed as a study of the history and ethnography of organ transplantation in modern Egypt, Hamdy’s work uses a wide range of sources to encourage readers to think in a much more nuanced way about categories that we tend to generalize: bodies, family, religion, Islam, the idea of a “black market.” The story ranges from printed texts and interviews, to television programs, participant observation in classes on Islamic jurisprudence, and fieldwork in hospitals, private clinics, and other medical institutions. At every stage, Hamdy offers accounts (often quite moving) of individuals who are in the process of weighing the risks and benefits of transplantation, reminding us that none of these individuals exists outside of a complex web of social, political, familial, and other relationships. It is an inspiring book that ought to be read and assigned widely. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/islamic-studies