New Books in Islamic Studies Podcast

On Edward Said's "Orientalism" from 2022-11-08T09:00

Beginning in the 17th century, European countries began colonizing countries east of Europe. They imposed their own ideas over local cultures and extracted free labor and resources. One way that Eu...

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S. Daulatzai and J. Rana, “With Stones in Our Hands: Reflections on Racism, Muslims and US Empire” (U Minnesota Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In this current moment it has become increasingly clear that US society is deeply entangled in racist policies and logics of white supremacy. While this affects numerous communities, anti-Muslim ra...

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Aysha Hidayatullah, “Feminist Edges of the Qur’an” (Oxford UP, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What are some of the key features and characteristics of the Muslim feminist Qur’an exegetical tradition and what are some of the tensions and ambiguities found in that tradition? Those are the cen...

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Ulrike Freitag, "A History of Jeddah: The Gate to Mecca in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries" (Cambridge UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Ulrike Freitag’s A History of Jeddah: The Gate to Mecca in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (Cambridge University Press), offers a rich urban and biographical history of Jeddah. Known as the ...

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Kecia Ali, “The Lives of Muhammad” (Harvard UP, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Muhammad is remembered in a multitude of ways, by both Muslims and non-Muslims. And through each retelling we learn a great deal not only about Muhammad but about the social milieu of the authors. ...

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Alyssa Gabbay, "Gender and Succession in Medieval and Early Modern Islam" (I.B. Tauris, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In this episode, we speak with Alyssa Gabbay about her recent new book Gender and Succession in Medieval and Early Modern Islam: Bilateral Descent and the Legacy of Fatima (I.B. Tauris, 2020). The ...

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Bruce B. Lawrence, “Who is Allah?” (UNC Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In his lyrical and brilliant new book Who is Allah? (UNC Press, 2015), the legendary scholar of Islam Bruce B. Lawrence, Professor Emeritus of Religion at Duke University, wrestles with the questio...

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Nathan Spannaus, "Preserving Islamic Tradition: Abu Nasr Qursawi and the Beginnings of Modern Reformism" (Oxford UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What were some of the major transformations taking place for Muslim communities in the Russian Empire of the eighteenth century? How did the introduction of a state-backed structure for Muslim reli...

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James Gelvin, “The Arab Uprisings: What Everyone Needs to Know” (Oxford UP, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Professor James Gelvin joins host Jonathan Judaken to discuss the Arab Uprisings, democratization in the Middle-East and Northern Africa, ISIS, al-Qaeda, terrorism, and America’s role imposing neo-...

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Gaurav Desai, "Commerce with the Universe: Africa, India, and the Afrasian Imagination" (Columbia UP, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Gaurav Desai’s Commerce with the Universe: Africa, India, and the Afrasian Imagination (Columbia University Press, 2013), offers an alternative history of East Africa in the Indian Ocean world. Rea...

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Venkat Dhulipala, “Creating a New Medina: State Power, Islam, and the Quest for Pakistan in Late Colonial North India” (Cambridge UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In the historiography on South Asian Islam, the creation of Pakistan is often approached as the manifestation of a vague loosely formulated idea that accidentally emerged as a nation-state in 1947....

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Asma Barlas, "Believing Women in Islam: Unreading Patriarchal Interpretations of the Qur’an" (U Texas Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In this revised edition of her classic and groundbreaking work, Believing Women in Islam: Unreading Patriarchal Interpretations of the Qur’an (University of Texas Press, 2019), Asma Barlas demonstr...

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Emran El-Badawi, “The Qur’an and the Aramaic Gospel Traditions” (Routledge, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The Qur’an and the Aramaic Gospel Traditions (Routledge, 2013) written by Emran El-Badawi, professor and director of the Arab Studies program at the University of Houston, is a recent addition to t...

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Khurram Hussain, "Islam as Critique: Sayyid Ahmad Khan and the Challenge of Modernity" (Bloomsbury Academic, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Delighting in Khurram Hussain’s consistently sparkling prose is reason enough to read his new book Islam as Critique: Sayyid Ahmad Khan and the Challenge of Modernity (Bloomsbury Academic, 2019). B...

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Ebrahim Moosa, “What is a Madrasa?” (U of North Carolina Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Recent years have witnessed a spate of journalistic and popular writings on the looming threat to civilization that lurks in traditional Islamic seminaries or madrasas that litter the physical and ...

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Iraj Bashiri, "The History of the Civil War in Tajikistan" (Lexington Books, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In The History of the Civil War in Tajikistan (Lexington Books) Iraj Bashiri provides an overview of the Civil War in Tajikistan that emerged amidst the collapse of the Soviet Union. Based on perso...

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James Laine, “Meta-Religion: Religion and Power in World History” (U of California Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Most world religions textbooks follow a structure and conceptual framework that mirrors the modern discourse of world religions as distinct entities reducible to certain defining characteristics. I...

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Shahla Haeri, "The Unforgettable Queens of Islam: Succession, Authority and Gender" (Cambridge UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The Unforgettable Queens of Islam: Succession, Authority and Gender (Cambridge University Press, 2020) by Shahla Haeri (Associate Professor of Anthropology at Boston University) is a captivating bo...

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Denis Dragovic, “Religion and Post-Conflict Statebuilding: Roman Catholic and Sunni Islamic Perspectives” (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The subject of statebuilding has only become a more visible issue since the end of the Cold War and collapse of the Soviet Union. Since the 1990s, the world has continued to deal with a host of pro...

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Assan Sarr, "Islam, Power, and Dependency in the Gambia River Basin" (Rochester UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

An original, rigorously researched volume that questions long-accepted paradigms concerning land ownership and its use in Africa. Islam, Power, and Dependency in the Gambia River Basin (Rochester U...

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Mark S. Wagner, “Jews and Islamic Law in Early 20th-Century Yemen” (Indiana UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

During the early twentieth century, Yemeni Jews operated within a legal structure that defined them as dhimmi, that is, non-Muslims living as a protected population under the sovereignty of an Isla...

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Oludamini Ogunnaike, "Poetry in Praise of Prophetic Perfection: A Study of West African Arabic Madih Poetry and its Precedents" (Islamic Texts Society, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Around the world Muslims praise the Prophet Muhammad through the recitation of lyrical poetry. In West Africa, Arabic praise poetry has a rich history informed by local literary, spiritual, and rit...

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Marion Holmes Katz, “Women in the Mosque: A History of Legal Thought and Social Practice” Columbia University Press, 2014 from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Recently, there have been various debates within the Muslim community over women’s mosque attendance. While contemporary questions of modern society structure current conversations, this question, ...

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Sara Smith, "Intimate Geopolitics: Love, Territory and the Future on India’s Northern Threshold" (Rutgers UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What’s love got to do with it? Intimate Geopolitics: Love, Territory and the Future on India’s Northern Threshold (Rutgers University Press, 2020) by feminist political geographer Sara Smith tell u...

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Asma Sayeed, “Women and the Transmission of Religious Knowledge in Islam” (Cambridge UP, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Studies on the subject of women’s participation in religious and intellectual life in Islam have been few.Women and the Transmission of Religious Knowledge in Islam (Cambridge University Press, 201...

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Aliyah Khan,?"Far From Mecca: Globalizing the Muslim Caribbean"?(Rutgers UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Muslims have lived in the Caribbean for centuries. Far From Mecca: Globalizing the Muslim Caribbean?(Rutgers University Press, 2020) examines the archive of autobiography, literature, music and pub...

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Asaad al-Saleh, “Voices of the Arab Spring: Personal Stories from the Arab Revolutions” (Columbia UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Asaad al-Saleh is assistant professor of Arabic, comparative literature, and cultural studies in the Department of Languages and Literature and the Middle East Center at the University of Utah. His...

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Pernilla Myrne, "Female Sexuality in the Early Medieval Islamic World: Gender and Sex in Arabic Literature" (I. B. Tauris, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In this episode, I talk with Pernilla Myrne about her exciting and excellently researched book Female Sexuality in the Early Medieval Islamic World: Gender and Sex in Arabic Literature, published w...

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F. M. Gocek, “Denial of Violence: Ottoman Past, Turkish Present, and Collective Violence against the Armenians” (Oxford UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Adolf Hitler famously (and probably) said in a speech to his military leaders “Who, after all, speaks to-day of the annihilation of the Armenians?” This remark is generally taken to suggest that fu...

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Hafsa Lodi,?"Modesty: A Fashion Paradox" (Neem Tree Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Modest fashion is a growing, global multi-billion-dollar market. As a fashion trend, it has increasingly made its way into high-profile runways, has been endorsed by celebrities, and profiled in ma...

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Michael Birkel, “Qur’an in Conversation” (Baylor UP, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Michael Birkel‘s Qur’an in Conversation (Baylor University Press, 2014) challenges its readers to think deeply about the Qur’an. The book will likely leave the reader with many answers but also man...

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Ahmed El-Shamsy, "Rediscovering the Islamic Classics" (Princeton UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Ahmed El-Shamsy’s Rediscovering the Islamic Classics: How Editors and Print Culture Transformed an Intellectual Tradition (Princeton University Press, 2020) is an astonishing scholarly feat that pr...

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Jamal Elias, “Aisha’s Cushion” (Harvard UP, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In his remarkable new book Aisha’s Cushion: Religious Art, Practice, and Perception in Islam (Harvard University Press, 2012), Jamal Elias, Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Penns...

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Kevin W. Fogg, "Indonesia’s Islamic Revolution" (Cambridge UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

As Indonesia nears the 75th anniversary of its proclamation of independence this year, the socio-political debates surrounding her birth as a nation-state take on contemporary salience. In Indonesi...

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Peter Gottschalk, “Religion, Science, and Empire: Classifying Hinduism and Islam in British India” (Oxford UP, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

When did religion begin in South Asia? Many would argue that it was not until the colonial encounter that South Asians began to understand themselves as religious. In Religion, Science, and Empire:...

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Johanna Pink, “Muslim Qur??nic Interpretation Today: Media, Genealogies and Interpretive Communities” (Equinox, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Qur?anic interpretation in contemporary societies is shaped in a multitude of ways. There are educational institutions that inform how one understands the text, linguistic hurdles for readers and c...

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M. Brett Wilson, “Translating the Qur’an in an Age of Nationalism: Print Culture and Modern Islam in Turkey” Oxford University Press, 2014 from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Muslim debates regarding the translation of the Qur’an are very old. However, during the modern period they became heated because local communities around the globe were rethinking their relationsh...

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Ayesha Siddiqi, "In the Wake of Disaster: Islamists, the State and a Social Contract in Pakistan" (Cambridge UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Over the last couple of decades, a number of books written both by the academics and journalists have appeared on many dysfunctions of the Pakistani state, a few of them even predicting why and ho...

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Raymond Farrin, “Structure and Qur’anic Interpretation” (White Cloud Press, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Interest in the structure of the Qur’an has its beginnings in the ninthcentury CE with Muslim scholars. Since that time, Muslim and Western scholars have debated the coherence of the Qur’an’s struc...

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Lara Harb, "Arabic Poetics: Aesthetic Experience in Classical Arabic Literature" (Cambridge UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Lara Harb’s Arabic Poetics: Aesthetic Experience in Classical Arabic Literature (Cambridge University Press, 2020) is a delightful and formidable study on the details and development of poetics and...

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Sophia Rose Arjana, “Muslims in the Western Imagination” (Oxford UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In Muslims in the Western Imagination (Oxford University Press, 2015), Sophia Rose Arjana explores a variety of creative productions–including art, literature, film–in order to tell a story not abo...

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Garrett Felber, "Those Who Know Don't Say: The Nation of Islam, the Black Freedom Movement, and the Carceral State" (UNC Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Challenging incarceration and policing was central to the post-war Black Freedom Movement. In his new book Those Who Know Don't Say: The Nation of Islam, the Black Freedom Movement, and the Carcera...

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Cabeiri Robinson, “Body of Victim, Body of Warrior: Refugee Families and the Making of Kashmiri Jihadists” (University of California Press, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The idea of jihad is among the most keenly discussed yet one of the least understood concepts in Islam. In her brilliant new book Body of Victim, Body of Warrior: Refugee Families and the Making of...

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Mauro Nobili, "Sultan, Caliph, and the Renewer of the Faith" (Cambridge UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In the early 19th century, on the floodplain of the Niger river’s inland delta in West Africa (present-day Mali), the Caliphate of ?amdall?hi emerged. The new State, locally known as the Maasina Di...

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Neilesh Bose, “Recasting the Region: Language, Culture, and Islam in Colonial Bengal” (Oxford UP, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In his new book Recasting the Region: Language, Culture, and Islam in Colonial Bengal (Oxford University Press, 2014),Neilesh Bose analyses the trajectories of Muslim Bengali politics in the first ...

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Gabriel Said Reynolds, "Allah: God in the Qur’an" (Yale UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In Allah: God in the Qur’an (Yale University Press, 2020), Gabriel Said Reynolds argues that contrary to many scholarly and popular claims about the God of the Qur’an as either merciful or vengeful...

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John Renard, “Islamic Theological Themes: A Primary Source Reader” (U of California Press, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Islamic theology is generally understood or approached in terms of its systematic or speculative forms. In Islamic Theological Themes: A Primary Source Reader (University of California Press, 2014)...

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Brian Greene, "Until the End of Time: Mind, Matter, and Our Search for Meaning in an Evolving Universe" (Random House, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Brian Greene is a Professor of Mathematics and Physics at Columbia University in the City of New York, where he is the Director of the Institute for Strings, Cosmology, and Astroparticle Physics, a...

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Isra Yazicioglu, “Understanding Qur’anic Miracle Stories in the Modern Age” (Penn State UP, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In Understanding Qur’anic Miracle Stories in the Modern Age (Pennsylvania State University Press, 2013), Isra Yazicioglu draws connections between an array of scholars, from different time periods ...

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Chiara Formichi, "Islam and Asia: A History" (Cambridge UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Challenging the geographical narrative of the history of Islam, Chiara Formichi’s new book Islam and Asia: A History (Cambridge University Press, 2020), helps us to rethink how we tell the story of...

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Kavita Datla, “The Language of Secular Islam: Urdu Nationalism and Colonial India” from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In her brilliant new book, The Language of Secular Islam: Urdu Nationalism and Colonial India (University of Hawaii Press, 2013),Kavita Datla, Associate Professor of History at Mount Holyoke Colleg...

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M’hamed Oualdi, "A Slave between Empires: A Transimperial History of North Africa" (Columbia UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In light of the profound physical and mental traumas of colonization endured by North Africans, historians of recent decades have primarily concentrated their studies of North Africa on colonial vi...

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Michael Hawkins, “Making Moros: Imperial Historicism and American Military Rule in the Philippines’ Muslim South” (NIU Press, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

For many Muslim communities particular religious identities were formulated or hardened within colonial realities. These types of cultural encounters were structural for the various Muslim tribes i...

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Yassir Morsi, “Radical Skin, Moderate Masks: De-radicalising the Muslim and Racism in Post-racial Societies” (Rowman and Littlefield, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Muslims living in locations like Australia, Europe, or North America exist within a context dominated by white racial norms and are forced to grapple with those conventions on a daily basis. If the...

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Sahar Amer, “What is Veiling?” (UNC Press, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

There are few concepts commonly associated with Islam and Muslims today that evoke more anxiety, phobia, and paranoia than the veil, commonly translated as the hijab. Seen by many as the most quint...

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Jacqueline H. Fewkes, "Locating Maldivian Women's Mosques in Global Discourses" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What is a mosque? What are women's mosques specifically? What historical values do women's mosques offer, and what is the relationship between mosque spaces and women's religious work? How do women...

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Vahid Brown and Don Rassler, “Fountainhead of Jihad: The Haqqani Nexus, 1973-2012” (Oxford UP, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Vahid Brown and Don Rassler‘s Fountainhead of Jihad: The Haqqani Nexus, 1973-2012 (Oxford University Press, 2013) is a meticulously researched and remarkably detailed exposition of the Haqqani netw...

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Caleb Simmons, "Devotional Sovereignty: Kingship and Religion in India" (Oxford UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In his book Devotional Sovereignty: Kingship and Religion in India (Oxford University Press, 2020), Caleb Simmons examines the reigns of Tipu Sultan (r. 1782-1799) and Krishnaraja Wodeyar III (r. 1...

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Michael Cook, “Ancient Religions, Modern Politics: The Islamic Case in Comparative Perspective” (Princeton UP, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Michael Cook, a widely-respected historian and scholar of Islam begins his book with a question that everyone seems to be asking these days: is Islam uniquely violent or uniquely political? Why doe...

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Maria Rashid, "Dying to Serve: Militarism, Affect, and the Politics of Sacrifice in the Pakistan Army" (Stanford UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In her spellbindingly brilliant new book, Dying to Serve: Militarism, Affect, and the Politics of Sacrifice in the Pakistan Army (Stanford University Press, 2020), Maria Rashid conducts an intimate...

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Amy Evrard, “The Moroccan Women’s Rights Movement” (Syracuse University Press, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

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 ri...

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Ibrahim Fraihat, "Iran and Saudi Arabia: Taming a Chaotic Conflict" (Edinburgh UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Ibrahim Fraihat’s latest book, Iran and Saudi Arabia: Taming a Chaotic Conflict (Edinburgh University Press, 2020) is much more than an exploration of the history of animosity between Saudi Arabia ...

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Jonathan A. C. Brown, “Misquoting Muhammad” (Oneworld Publications, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

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 ...

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Mallika Kaur, "Faith, Gender, and Activism in the Punjab Conflict: The Wheat Fields Still Whisper" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Punjab was the arena of one of the first major armed conflicts of post-colonial India. During its deadliest decade, as many as 250,000 people were killed. This book makes an urgent intervention in ...

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Amanullah De Sondy, “The Crisis of Islamic Masculinities” (Bloomsbury, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

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...

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Julia Stephens, “Governing Islam: Law, Empire, and Secularism in Modern South Asia” (Cambridge UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

As British colonial rulers expanded their control in South Asia legal resolutions were increasingly shaped by the English classification of social life. The definitional divide that structured the ...

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Sarah Bowen Savant, “The New Muslims of Post-Conquest Iran: Tradition, Memory, and Conversion” (Cambridge UP, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

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 peo...

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Leslie M. Harris, "Slavery and the University: Histories and Legacies" (U Georgia Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Slavery and the University: Histories and Legacies (University of Georgia Press, 2019), edited by Leslie M. Harris, James T. Campbell, and Alfred L. Brophy, is the first edited collection of schola...

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Donald Holbrook, “The Al-Qaeda Doctrine: The Framing and Evolution of the Leadership’s Public Discourse” (Bloomsbury, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

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...

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Ünver Rüstem, "Ottoman Baroque: The Architectural Refashioning of Eighteenth-Century Istanbul" (Princeton UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In Istanbul, there is a mosque on every hill. Cruising along the Bosphorus, either for pleasure, or like the majority of Istanbul’s denizens, for transit, you cannot help but notice that the city’s...

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Iqbal Sevea, “The Political Philosophy of Muhammad Iqbal: Islam and Nationalism in Late Colonial India” (Cambridge UP, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

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 fath...

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Danielle Ross, "Tatar Empire: Kazan's Muslims and the Making of Imperial Russia" (Indiana UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In her new book Tatar Empire: Kazan's Muslims and the Making of Imperial Russia (Indiana University Press, 2020), Danielle Ross looks at how the Tatars of Kazan participated in the formation of the...

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Nabil Matar, “Henry Stubbe and the Beginnings of Islam: The Originall and Progress of Mahometanism” (Columbia UP, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

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 seven...

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Courtney M. Dorroll, “Teaching Islamic Studies in the Age of ISIS, Islamophobia and the Internet” (Indiana UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Islamic Studies classrooms have grown significantly over several generations. While once we could only find courses on the tradition in the most prestigious of institutions now Islam classes are ta...

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William Chittick, “Divine Love: Islamic Literature and the Path to God” (Yale UP, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

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...

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Eric Dursteler, "In the Sultan’s Realm: Two Venetian Reports on the Early Modern Ottoman Empire" (CRRS, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In the Sultan’s Realm: Two Venetian Reports on the Early Modern Ottoman Empire (Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, 2018) is Professor Eric Dursteler’s translation of two final diplomat...

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Ovamir Anjum, “Politics, Law, and Community in Islamic Thought: The Taymiyyan Moment” (Cambridge UP, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

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 ...

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Christiane Gruber, “The Praiseworthy One: The Prophet Muhammad in Islamic Texts and Images" (Indiana UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In our most recent public memory, images of the Prophet Muhammad have caused a great deal of controversy, such as satirical cartoons of Muhammad in French magazine Charlie Hebdo, or Danish newspape...

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Shabana Mir, “Muslim American Women on Campus: Undergraduate Social Life and Identity” (UNC, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

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 im...

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Shadaab Rahemtullah, "Qur'an of the Oppressed: Liberation Theology and Gender Justice in Islam" (Oxford UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Shadaab Rahemtullah's book Qur'an of the Oppressed: Liberation Theology and Gender Justice in Islam (Oxford University Press, 2017) offers a compelling comparative analysis of the works of four Mus...

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Ronen Shamir, “Current Flow: The Electrification of Palestine” (Stanford UP, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

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 Pres...

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Christine Fair, "In Their Own Words: Understanding Lashkar-e-Tayyaba" (Oxford UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The attacks on the luxurious Taj Hotel in Mumbai in 2008 put Lashkar-e-Tayyaba, a jihadist terrorist group, in the international / Western spotlight for the first time, though they had been deadly ...

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John P. Turner, “Inquisition in Early Islam” (I.B. Tauris, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Scholars of Islam and historians have frequently pointed to the Miá¸¥na, translated as ‘trial’ or ‘test,’ as a crossroad in the landscape of Islamic history. Professor John P. Turner of Colby Colle...

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Kate Imy, "Faithful Fighters: Identity and Power in the British Indian Army" (Stanford UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In her fascinating and remarkable new book Faithful Fighters: Identity and Power in the British Indian Army (Stanford University Press, 2019), Kate Imy explores the negotiation of religious identit...

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Brian A. Catlos, “Muslims of Medieval Latin Christendom, c.1050-1614” (Cambridge UP, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

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 Musl...

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Matt Cook, "Sleight of Mind: 75 Ingenious Paradoxes in Mathematics, Physics, and Philosophy" (MIT Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Paradox is a sophisticated kind of magic trick. A magician's purpose is to create the appearance of impossibility, to pull a rabbit from an empty hat. Yet paradox doesn't require tangibles, like ra...

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Rachel Rinaldo, “Mobilizing Piety: Islam and Feminism in Indonesia” (Oxford UP, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

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 Virgi...

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Edward E. Curtis IV, "Muslim American Politics and the Future of US Democracy" (NYU Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In his new book Muslim American Politics and the Future of US Democracy (New York University Press, 2019), Edward E. Curtis IV interrogates the limitations of American liberalism in light of the st...

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J. Matthias Determann, “Historiography in Saudi Arabia: Globalization and the State in the Middle East” (Tauris, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

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 g...

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Ahmet T. Kuru, "Islam, Authoritarianism, and Underdevelopment: A Global and Historical Comparison" (Cambridge UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Ahmet T. Kuru’s new book Islam, Authoritarianism and Underdevelopment, A Global and Historical Comparison (Cambridge University Press, 2019) is a ground-breaking history and analysis of the evoluti...

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Hugh Talat Halman, “Where The Two Seas Meet” (Fons Vitae, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

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)...

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Shoshana Keller, "Russia and Central Asia: Coexistence, Conquest, Convergence" (U Toronto Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Shoshana Keller’s new book, Russia and Central Asia: Coexistence, Conquest, Convergence (University of Toronto Press, 2019) provides an excellent introduction and overview of the history of Central...

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Najam Haider, “The Origins of the Shia: Identity, Ritual, and Sacred Space in Eighth-Century Kufa” (Cambridge UP, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

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...

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Spencer Dew, "The Aliites: Race and Law in the Religions of Noble Drew Ali" (U Chicago Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In his dazzling new book The Aliites: Race and Law in the Religions of Noble Drew Ali (University of Chicago Press, 2019), Spencer Dew treats his readers to a riveting and often counterintuitive ac...

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Marwa Elshakry, “Reading Darwin in Arabic, 1860-1950” (University of Chicago Press, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

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 cent...

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Carl W. Ernst, “Hallaj: Poems of a Sufi Martyr” (Northwestern UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

“I am the Real,” is the ecstatic statement often associated with the early Sufi poet Mansur al-Hallaj. In popular narratives about Hallaj this declaration of absolute unity with God is what led to ...

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Sean Anthony, “Crucifixion and Death as Spectacle” (American Oriental Society, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

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, As...

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Salman Sayyid, "Recalling the Caliphate: Decolonization and World Order" (Hurst, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In his paradigm shifting book, Recalling the Caliphate: Decolonization and World Order (Hurst, 2014), which was recently translated into Arabic as Isti‘adat al-Khilafa Tafkik al-Isti‘mar wa al-Niza...

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Sa’diyya Shaikh, “Sufi Narratives of Intimacy: Ibn Arabi, Gender and Sexuality” (University of North Carolina Press, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

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 pol...

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Darryl Li, "The Universal Enemy: Jihad, Empire, and the Challenge of Solidarity" (Stanford UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

No contemporary figure is more demonized than the Islamist foreign fighter who wages jihad around the world. Spreading violence, disregarding national borders, and rejecting secular norms, so-calle...

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Zareena Grewal, “Islam is a Foreign Country: American Muslims and the Global Crisis of Authority” (NYU Press, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

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 historica...

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SherAli Tareen, "Defending Muhammad in Modernity" (U Notre Dame Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In his new book Defending Muhammad in Modernity (University of Notre Dame Press, 2020), SherAli Tareen, an associate professor of Religious Studies at Franklin and Marshall College, takes us into t...

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Nathan Schneider. “God in Proof: The Story of a Search from the Ancients to the Internet” (University of California Press, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

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. Ar...

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Phillipa Chong, “Inside the Critics’ Circle: Book Reviewing in Uncertain Times” (Princeton UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How does the world of book reviews work? In Inside the Critics’ Circle: Book Reviewing in Uncertain Times (Princeton University Press, 2020), Phillipa Chong, assistant professor in sociology at McM...

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Ayesha Chaudhry, “Domestic Violence and the Islamic Tradition” (Oxford University Press, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

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 rel...

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Murad Idris, "War for Peace: Genealogies of a Violent Ideal in Western and Islamic Thought" (Oxford UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Murad Idris, a political theorist in the Woodrow Wilson Department of Politics at the University of Virginia, explores the concept of peace, the term itself and the way that it has been considered ...

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Joshua Dubler, “Down in the Chapel: Religious Life in an American Prison” (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

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 a...

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Sohaira Siddiqui, "Law and Politics Under the Abbasids: An Intellectual Portrait of al-Juwayni" (Cambridge UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In her intimidatingly brilliant new book Law and Politics Under the Abbasids: An Intellectual Portrait of al-Juwayni (Cambridge University Press, 2019), Sohaira Siddiqui conducts a masterful analys...

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Ellen J. Amster, “Medicine and the Saints” (University of Texas Press, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

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...

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Juliane Hammer, "Peaceful Families: American Muslim Efforts Against Domestic Violence" (Princeton UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How do Muslim Americans respond to domestic violence? What motivates Muslim individuals and organizations to work towards eradicating domestic violence in their communities? Where do Muslim provide...

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Karen Pechilis, “South Asian Religions: Tradition and Today” (Routledge, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

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...

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Jonathan A. C. Brown, "Slavery and Islam" (Oneworld Academic, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In his majestic and encyclopedic new book Slavery and Islam (Oneworld Academic, 2019), Jonathan A. C. Brown presents a sweeping analysis of Muslim intellectual, political, and social entanglements ...

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Ahmad Atif Ahmad, “The Fatigue of the SharÄ«’a” (Palgrave, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

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 Muslim...

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Alex Dika Seggerman, "Modernism on the Nile: Art in Egypt between the Islamic and the Contemporary" (UNC Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

With scholarship in the discipline of history witnessing a shift toward global approaches to local historical processes, new questions are being raised about how to identify commensurate theoretica...

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Afsar Mohammad, “The Festival of Pirs: Popular Islam and Shared Devotion in South India” (Oxford University Press, 2013 from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

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 ...

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SpearIt, “American Prisons: A Critical Primer on Culture and Conversion to Islam” (First Edition Design, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

America has the largest incarcerated population in the world. This staggering and troubling fact has driven a great deal of scholarship. Much of this research has shown that mass incarceration in A...

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Rebecca Williams, “Muhammad and the Supernatural: Medieval Arab Views” (Routledge, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

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 pro...

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K. Linder et al., "Going Alt-Ac: A Guide to Alternative Academic Careers" (Stylus Publishing, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

If you’re a grad student facing the ugly reality of finding a tenure-track job, you could easily be forgiven for thinking about a career change. However, if you’ve spent the last several years work...

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Ahmed El Shamsy, “The Canonization of Islamic Law: A Social and Intellectual History” (Cambridge UP, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

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 Chic...

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Anna M. Gade, “Muslim Environmentalisms: Religious and Social Foundations” (Columbia UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The relationship between Islam and the environment has a long and rich history across various Muslim societies. Anna M. Gade, Professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, outlines several stra...

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Carla Bellamy, “The Powerful Ephemeral: Everyday Healing in an Ambiguously Islamic Place” (University of California Press, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

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 pa...

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Benjamin Balint, "Jerusalem: City of the Book" (Yale UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

“The library is a gathering pool of narratives and of the people who come to find them. It is where we can glimpse immortality; in the library, we can live forever.” ? Susan Orlean, The Library Boo...

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Rumee Ahmed, “Narratives of Islamic Legal Theory” (Oxford UP, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

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 c...

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Arbella Bet-Shlimon, "City of Black Gold: Oil, Ethnicity, and the Making of Modern Kirkuk" (Stanford UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In her debut book, City of Black Gold: Oil, Ethnicity, and the Making of Modern Kirkuk (Stanford University Press, 2019), Arbella Bet-Shlimon explores the vibrant and often troubled history of one ...

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Agostino Cilardo, “The Early History of Islamili Jurisprudence” (I. B. Tauris, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Al-QÄ?á¸?Ä« al-Nuá¿¾mÄ?n (d. 363/974) was the primary architect of IsmÄ?á¿¾Ä«lÄ« jurisprudence which was formed under the Fatamids. The Early History of Ismaili Jurisprudence (I. B. Tauris, 2013) p...

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Narges Bajoghli, "Iran Reframed: Anxieties of Power in the Islamic Republic" (Stanford UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In her book Iran Reframed: Anxieties of Power in the Islamic Republic (Stanford University Press, 2019), Narges Bajoghli takes an inside look at what it means to be pro-regime in Iran, and the deba...

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Teena Purohit, “The Aga Khan Case: Religion and Identity in Colonial India” (Harvard UP, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

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 Univers...

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Robert Rozehnal, "Cyber Sufis: Virtual Expressions of the American Muslim Experience" (OneWorld, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What happens when the digital world meets Sufism? This is the question raised in the exciting new book Cyber Sufis: Virtual Expressions of the American Muslim Experience (OneWorld Academic, 2019) b...

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Mohammed Rustom, “The Triumph of Mercy: Philosophy and Scripture in Mulla Sadra” (SUNY Press, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

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 abo...

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Leor Halevi, "Modern Things on Trial: Islam’s Global and Material Reformation in the Age of Rida, 1865-1935" (Columbia UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How did Muslims respond to foreign goods in an age characterized by global exchange and European imperial expansion? What sort of legal reasoning did scholars apply in order to appropriate – or rej...

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Sarra Tlilli, “Animals in the Qur’an” (Cambridge UP, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

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 hu...

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Barbara Spackman, "Accidental Orientalists: Modern Italian Travelers in Ottoman Lands" (Liverpool UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Barbara Spackman’s riveting study identifies a strand of what it calls “Accidental Orientalism” in narratives by Italians who found themselves in Ottoman Egypt and Anatolia in the late 19th and ear...

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Paul O’Connor, “Islam in Hong Kong: Muslims and Everyday Life in China’s World City” (Hong Kong UP, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

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 que...

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Seyed Ali Alavi, "Iran and Palestine: Past, Present, and Future" (Routledge, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In Iran and Palestine: Past, Present and Future (Routledge, 2019), Seyed Ali Alavi (SOAS University of London) surveys the history of the relationship between Iran – and especially the Islamic Repu...

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Nancy Khalek, “Damascus after the Muslim Conquest” (Oxford University Press, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

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 B...

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K. B. Berzock, "Caravans of Gold, Fragments in Time: Art, Culture, and Exchange across Medieval Saharan Africa" (Princeton UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The companion publication to the 2019-2020 traveling exhibition Caravans of Gold, Fragments in Time: Art, Culture, and Exchange across Medieval Saharan Africa (Princeton University Press, 2019, pub...

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R. Kevin Jaques, “Ibn Hajar: Makers of Islamic Civilization” (I. B. Tauris, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

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 á¸¤ajar al-‘AsqalÄ?nÄ« (d. 852/1449). ...

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Martin Nguyen, "Modern Muslim Theology: Engaging God and the World with Faith and Imagination" (Rowman and Littlefield, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What precisely is “Muslim theology?” What would a “Muslim theology” in the present day look like? And what then is a “Muslim theology of engagement?” In Modern Muslim Theology: Engaging God and the...

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Mohammad Khalil, “Islam and the Fate of Others: The Salvation Question” (Oxford UP, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

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...

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Asma T. Uddin, "When Islam Is Not a Religion: Inside America’s Fight for Religious Freedom" (Pegasus Books, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What happens when a religion is demonized to such an extent that it is no longer deemed a religion – but an ideology? What effect does such a political refashioning of a religion have on the rights...

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Justin Jones, “Shi’a Islam in Colonial India: Religion, Community and Sectarianism” (Cambridge UP, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

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 a...

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Zahra Ali, "Women and Gender in Iraq: Between Nation-Building and Fragmentation" (Cambridge UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In her powerful new book Women and Gender in Iraq: Between Nation-Building and Fragmentation (Cambridge UP, 2018), Zahra Ali presents a detailed and fascinating account of Muslim feminist discourse...

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Martin Nguyen, “Sufi Master and Qur’an Scholar: Abu’l-Qasim al-Qushayri and the Lata’if al-isharat” (Oxford University Press, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

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...

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Peter Adamson, "Philosophy in the Islamic World: A History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps, Volume 3" (Oxford UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

It is no easy task to survey and present a comprehensive history of philosophy of an entire intellectual tradition to a broad public audience without compromising on the scholarly rigor demanded by...

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Patrick Dunleavy, “The Fertile Soil of Jihad: Terrorism’s Prison Connection” (Potomac Books, 2011 ) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

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 th...

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Michael Krona and Rosemary Pennington, "The Media World of ISIS" (Indiana UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

From efficient instructions on how to kill civilians to horrifying videos of beheadings, no terrorist organization has more comprehensively weaponized social media than ISIS. Its strategic, multi-p...

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Aaron Hughes, “Theorizing Islam: Disciplinary Deconstruction and Reconstruction” (Equinox, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

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 ...

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Afshin Matin-Asgari, "Both Eastern and Western: An Intellectual History of Iranian Modernity" (Cambridge UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Following the Iranian Revolution of 1978—79, public and scholarly interest in Iran have skyrocketed, with a plethora of attempts seeking to understand and explain the events which led up to that mo...

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Juliane Hammer, “American Muslim Women, Religious Authority, and Activism: More Than a Prayer” (University of Texas Press, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

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 co...

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Maziyar Ghiabi, "Drug Politics: Managing Disorder in the Islamic Republic of Iran" (Cambridge UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Iran has one of the planet's highest rates of addiction. Maziyar Ghiabi's Drug Politics: Managing Disorder in the Islamic Republic of Iran (Cambridge University Press, 2019) offers a fascinating, n...

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Karen Ruffle, “Gender, Sainthood, and Everyday Practice in South Asian Shi’ism” (University of North Carolina Press, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

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...

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Claire Chambers, “Making Sense of Contemporary British Muslim Novels” (Palgrave, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

After the Rushdie affair in 1989 there was an important shift in the public life of British Muslims. Their image came under closer scrutiny which led to new social policies and self-perceptions. Th...

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Whitney Bodman, “The Poetics of Iblis: Narrative Theology in the Qur’an” (Harvard UP, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

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 qualitie...

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Alberto Cairo, "How Charts Lie: Getting Smarter about Visual Information" (Norton, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

We’ve all heard that a picture is worth a thousand words, but what if we don’t understand what we’re looking at? Social media has made charts, infographics, and diagrams ubiquitous?and easier to sh...

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Steve Kemper, “Labyrinth of Kingdoms: 10,000 Miles Through Islamic Africa” (Norton, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

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 exce...

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Christine D. Baker, "Medieval Islamic Sectarianism" (Amsterdam UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How do contemporary events shape the ways in which we read, understand, and interpret historical processes of identity formation? How can we resist framing conflicts of the past through frameworks ...

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Ann Elizabeth Mayer, “Islam and Human Rights: Traditions and Politics” (Westview Press, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

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 countr...

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Sebastian Prange, "Monsoon Islam: Trade and Faith on the Medieval Malabar Coast" (Cambridge UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Monsoon Islam: Trade and Faith on the Medieval Malabar Coast (Cambridge University Press, 2019) by Sebastian Prange provides a fascinating window into the Muslim world of the medieval (12-16th cent...

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Sherine Hamdy, “Our Bodies Belong to God: Organ Transplants, Islam, and the Struggle for Human Dignity in Egypt” (University of California Press, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

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 Transpla...

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Nosheen Ali, "Delusional States: Feeling Rule and Development in Pakistan’s Northern Frontier" (Cambridge UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In her pioneering and politically urgent new book Delusional States: Feeling Rule and Development in Pakistan’s Northern Frontier (Cambridge UP, 2019), Nosheen Ali presents a lyrical and at many ti...

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Nabil Matar and Gerald MacLean, “Britain and the Islamic World, 1558-1713” (Oxford UP, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Nineteenth-century observers would say that the British Empire was an Islamic one; be that as it may, before Empire there was trade- and lots of it. Nabil Matar and Gerald MacLean‘s book, Britain a...

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Simon Wolfgang Fuchs, "In a Pure Muslim Land: Shi’ism between Pakistan and the Middle East" (UNC Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Scholarly and public discourse on Islamic intellectual thought in the modern period tend to frame it narrowly through the concept of “influence” as it emanates from the Middle Eastern “center” to t...

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Parna Sengupta, “Pedagogy for Religion: Missionary Education and the Fashioning of Hindus and Muslims in Bengal” (University of California Press, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What is the relationship between religion, secularization, and education? Parna Sengupta, Associate Director of Introductory Studies at Stanford University, explores their connections as she reexam...

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Alicia Izharuddin, “Gender and Islam in Indonesian Cinema” (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Since the fall of the Indonesian New Order regime in 1998 there has been a steady rise of Islamic popular culture in the nation. Muslim consumers and producers have cultivated a mediated domain whe...

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Jay Rubenstein, “Armies of Heaven: The First Crusade and the Quest for Apocalypse” (Basic Books, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

You’ve got to be pretty creative to get anything like “holy war” out of the New Testament, what with all that trespass-forgiving, cheek-turning, and neighbor-loving. By all appearances Jesus didn’t...

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Najam Haider, "The Rebel and the Imam in Early Islam" (Cambridge UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In the absence of any real certainty about the nature and intention of the early sources that tell us the story of the early Islamic period, how can we use them? What sort of methodological approac...

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Laury Silvers, “A Soaring Minaret: Abu Bakr al-Wasiti and the Rise of Baghdadi Sufism” (SUNY Press, 2010) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

A broad portrait of early Islamic mysticism is fairly well-know. However, there are only a few key figures that have been explored in great detail and their activities shape how we understand this ...

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Kathryn Conrad on University Press Publishing from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

As you may know, university presses publish a lot of good books. In fact, they publish thousands of them every year. They are different from most trade books in that most of them are what you might...

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Abdulkader Tayob, “Religion in Modern Islamic Discourse” (Columbia University Press, 2010) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Many people believe that the current Islamic resurgence is not necessarily a “return of religion,” but rather a continuation of tradition. According to this line of thought, therefore, Islam is ess...

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Dan Jones, "Crusaders: The Epic History of the Wars for the Holy Lands" (Viking, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Much has been written about the Crusades, the religiously-inspired wars that pockmarked the later centuries of the Middle Ages. Yet for all of the many books on the subject there has been surprisin...

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Kambiz GhaneaBassiri, “A History of Islam in America: From the New World to the New World Order” (Cambridge UP, 2010) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Despite the fact that many American Muslim families have lived in the United States for generations they are often thought of as foreigners. I have witnessed on several occasions someone asking an ...

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J. Neuhaus, "Geeky Pedagogy: A Guide for Intellectuals, Introverts, and Nerds Who Want to Be Effective Teachers" (West Virginia UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The things that make people academics -- as deep fascination with some arcane subject, often bordering on obsession, and a comfort with the solitude that developing expertise requires -- do not nec...

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Carool Kersten, “Cosmopolitans and Heretics: New Muslim Intellectuals and the Study of Islam” (Columbia University Press, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Often when we read about new Muslim intellectuals we are offered a presentation of their politicized Islamic teachings and radical interpretations of theology, or Western readings that nominally re...

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Mohammed Dajani Daoudi, "Teaching Empathy and Reconciliation In Midst Of Conflict" (Wasatia Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

“Moderation in times of extremism is a revolutionary idea. It is a positive, courageous value, as opposed to a defeatist attitude. It is swimming against the tide, rather than following the crowd o...

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Greg Myre and Jennifer Griffin, “This Burning Land: Lessons from the Front Lines of the Transformed Israeli-Palestinian Conflict” (Wiley, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In their new book, This Burning Land: Lessons from the Front Lines of the Transformed Israeli-Palestinian Conflict (Wiley-Blackwell, 2011), the husband and wife team of Greg Myre and Jennifer Griff...

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Farhat Haq, "Shari?a and the State in Pakistan: Blasphemy Politics" (Routledge, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Few doctrinal and political issues are more controversial in Pakistan today than that of blasphemy. In her excellent and engaging new book Shari?a and the State in Pakistan: Blasphemy Politics (Rou...

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Giancarlo Casale, “The Ottoman Age of Exploration” (Oxford UP, 2010) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

You’ve probably heard of the “Age of Exploration.” You know, Henry the Navigator, Vasco da Gama, Columbus, etc., etc. But actually that was the European Age of Exploration (and really it wasn’t eve...

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Ussama Makdisi, "Age of Coexistence: The Ecumenical Frame and the Making of the Modern Arab World" (U California Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Building on nearly two decades of scholarship about sectarianism and communal relations in the Modern Middle East, Ussama Makdisi’s latest book, Age of Coexistence: The Ecumenical Frame and the Mak...

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Lesley Hazleton, “After the Prophet: The Epic Story of the Shia-Sunni Split” (Doubleday, 2009) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Sometimes a shallow explanation, the kind you read in newspapers and hear on television, is enough. “The home team was beaten at the buzzer” is probably all you need to know. Sometimes, however, it...

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Eskandar Sadeghi-Boroujerdi, "Revolution and Its Discontents: Political Thought and Reform in Iran" (Cambridge UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In this new book, Revolution and its Discontents, Political Thought and Reform in Iran (Cambridge University Press, 2019), Eskandar Sadeghi-Boroujerdi’s (of Goldsmiths University of London) studies...

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Ather Zia, "Resisting Disappearance: Military Occupation and Women’s Activism" (U Washington Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Ather Zia’s Resisting Disappearance: Military Occupation and Women’s Activism (University of Washington Press, 2019) is a brilliant, bold, and urgent ethnography centered on Kashmiri women of the A...

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Seth J. Frantzman, "After Isis: America, Iran and the Struggle for the Middle East" (Gefen, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The enterprise of journalism is in crisis. Today’s journalists face accusations of “fake news” on the one hand, and harassment, arrest, and even the murder of reporters on the other. At the same ti...

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Zahra Ayubi, "Gendered Morality: Classical Islamic Ethics of the Self, Family, and Society" (Columbia UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How are notions of justice and equality constructed in Islamic virtue ethics (akhlaq)? How are Islamic virtue ethics gendered, despite their venture into perennial concerns of how best to live a go...

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Elizabeth S. Kassab, "Enlightenment on the Eve of Revolution: The Egyptian and Syrian Debates" (Columbia UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The "Arab Spring" shook the world in 2011, revealing profound dissatisfaction throughout the Middle East and North Africa, as people throughout the region took to the streets demanding dramatic pol...

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David Gaunt, "Let Them Not Return" (Berghahn Books, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Sometimes it seems that there’s nothing left to say about mass violence in the 20th century. But the new edited volume Let Them Not Return: Sayfo – The Genocide Against the Assyrian, Syriac, and C...

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Michael Lower, "The Tunis Crusade of 1270: A Mediterranean History" (Oxford UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Why was a Crusade that was initially meant for Syria end up in Tunis? How did the aspirations of the King of France and the Mamluk Sultan, the King of Sicily and the Hafsid Emir of Tunis, get entan...

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Nazia Kazi, "Islamophobia, Race, and Global Politics (Rowman and Littlefield, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Nazia Kazi’s Islamophobia, Race, and Global Politics (Rowman & Littlefield, 2018) is a brilliant and powerful meditation on the intersection and interaction of Islamophobia, racism, and U.S. imperi...

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Robert Haug, "The Eastern Frontier: Limits of Empire in Late Antique and Early Medieval Central Asia" (I. B. Tauris, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Robert Haug’s new book, The Eastern Frontier: Limits of Empire in Late Antique and Early Medieval Central Asia (I. B. Tauris, 2019) is an in-depth look at the frontier zone of the Sassanian, Umayya...

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Laury Silvers, “The Lover” (Kindle Direct Publishers, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Zaytuna just wants to be left alone to her ascetic practices and nurse her dark view of the world. But when an impoverished servant girl she barely knows comes and begs her to bring some justice to...

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Emrah ?ahin, "Faithful Encounters: Authorities and American Missionaries in the Ottoman Empire" (McGill-Queens UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The past decade has seen a tremendous production of scholarship on American missionary endeavors in the Middle East. In Faithful Encounters: Authorities and American Missionaries in the Ottoman Emp...

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Richard Foltz, "History of the Tajiks: Iranians of the East" (I.B. Tauris, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In History of the Tajiks: Iranians of the East(I.B. Tauris, 2019), Richard Foltz provides a comprehensive cultural, political, and linguistic history of the Tajik people. Throughout the book, he tr...

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Sasha D. Pack, "The Deepest Border: The Strait of Gibraltar and the Making of the Hispano-African Border" (Stanford UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In his new book, The Deepest Border: The Strait of Gibraltar and the Making of the Hispano-African Border(Stanford, 2019), Sasha D. Pack considers the Strait of Gibraltar as an untamed in-between s...

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Jeremy F. Walton, "Muslim Civil Society and the Politics of Religious Freedom in Turkey" (Oxford UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The social history of Turkey across the twentieth century has produced a tension between state governance and religion. This history informs and shapes modern subjects as they try to live out an au...

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Botakoz Kassymbekova, "Despite Cultures: Early Soviet Rule in Tajikistan" (U Pittsburgh Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Botakoz Kassymbekova’s Despite Cultures: Early Soviet Rule in Tajikistan (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2016) is a terrific study of early Soviet rule in Tajikistan based on extensive archival re...

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Joseph Hill, "Wrapping Authority: Women Islamic Leaders in a Sufi Movement in Dakar, Senegal" (U Toronto Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Joseph Hill's new book Wrapping Authority: Women Islamic Leaders in a Sufi Movement in Dakar, Senegal (University of Toronto Press, 2018), is an ethnographic study of women Sufi leaders in the Taal...

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Patton E. Burchett, "A Genealogy of Devotion: Bhakti, Tantra, Yoga, and Sufism in North India" (Columbia UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How distinct is Indian devotionalism from other strands of Indian religiosity? Is devotionalism necessarily at odds with asceticism in the Hindu world? What about the common contrasting of Hindu de...

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Amira Mittermaier, "Giving to God: Islamic Charity in Revolutionary Times" (U California Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In her stunning new book, Giving to God: Islamic Charity in Revolutionary Times (University of California Press, 2019), Amira Mittermaier, Associate Professor of Religion and Anthropology at the Un...

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Aaron Rock-Singer, "Practicing Islam in Egypt: Print Media and Islamic Revival" (Cambridge UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Discussions of Middle East politics will inevitably bring Islamism to the table and with it, questions of how Islam in its current iterations came to be. In most cases, the Islamic revival is empha...

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Mimi Hanaoka, "Authority and Identity in Medieval Islamic Historiography: Persian Histories from the Periphery" (Cambridge UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How do peripheral places assert the centrality of their identity? Why are fanciful events, like dreams and myths, useful narrative elements for identity construction and arguments about authority, ...

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Scott S. Reese, “Imperial Muslims: Islam, Community and Authority in the Indian Ocean, 1839-1937” (Edinburgh UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Religion and empire are often intertwined. Regarding Muslims there are well known dynasties like the Umayyad, the Abbasid, the Fatimid, the Ottoman, and many others. But the empire governing the la...

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Muhammad Qasim Zaman, "Islam in Pakistan: A History" (Princeton UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Muhammad Qasim Zaman’s Islam in Pakistan: A History(Princeton University Press, 2018) is a landmark publication in the fields of Religious Studies, modern Islam, South Asian Islam, and by far the m...

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Ariel I. Ahram, "Break all the Borders: Separatism and the Resshaping of the Middle East" (Oxford UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Since 2011, civil wars and state failure have wracked the Arab world, underlying the misalignment between national identity and political borders. In Break all the Borders: Separatism and the Ressh...

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Dilip Hiro, "Cold War in the Islamic World: Saudi Arabia, Iran and the Struggle for Supremacy" (Oxford UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In recent years, the concept of a ‘Cold War’ has been revived to describe the rivalry between Saudi Arabia and Iran, the two most influential states occupying positions of geopolitical importance i...

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Su'ad Abdul Khabeer, “Muslim Cool: Race, Religion, and Hip Hop in the United States” (NYU Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Islam in American has been profoundly shaped by the Black Muslim experience. However, Black Muslims are often marginalized both within their own religious communities and in public discourse about ...

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Brad Stoddard and Craig Martin, “Stereotyping Religion: Critiquing Clichés” (Bloomsbury, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

You’ve heard them all before. “Religions are Belief Systems.” “Religion is a Private Matter.” “I'm spiritual but not religious.” Our culture is full of popular stereotypes about religion, both posi...

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Linda K. Wertheimer, "Faith Ed: Teaching About Religion in an Age of Intolerance" (Beacon Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Faith Ed: Teaching About Religion in an Age of Intolerance (Beacon Press, 2017) by Linda K. Wertheimer profiles the beauty and difficulty of teaching about religion in public schools. Teaching abou...

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Discussion of Massive Online Peer Review and Open Access Publishing from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In the information age, knowledge is power. Hence, facilitating the access to knowledge to wider publics empowers citizens and makes societies more democratic. How can publishers and authors contri...

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Claire Pamment, "Comic Performance in Pakistan: The Bh?nd" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Claire Pamment’s book Comic Performance in Pakistan: The Bh?nd (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017) is a fantastic new book centered on the Punjabi folk art of the Bh?nd, or comic performance. Pamment explor...

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Ian Johnson, "The Souls of China: The Return of Religion After Mao" (Pantheon, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Ian Johnson’s new book, The Souls of China: The Return of Religion After Mao (Pantheon, 2017), was called "a masterpiece of observation and empathy" by The New York Review of Books, and The Econom...

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Geraldine Heng, "The Invention of Race in the European Middle Ages" (Cambridge UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In The Invention of Race in the European Middle Ages (Cambridge University Press 2018), Geraldine Heng collects a remarkable array of medieval approaches to race that show the breadth and depth of ...

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Justine Howe, “Suburban Islam” (Oxford UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The study of Islam is often focused on subjects involved in legal debates or ritual practice. But our understanding of Muslims should also be informed by everyday practices found in the suburbs. In...

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Ahmad Atif Ahmad, "Pitfalls of Scholarship: Lessons from Islamic Studies" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Ahmad Atif Ahmad’s Pitfalls of Scholarship: Lessons from Islamic Studies (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016) is a unique reflection on the field of Islamic studies. It is not quite a memoir, although it is...

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Brannon D. Ingram, "Revival from Below: The Deoband Movement and Global Islam" (U California Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Revival from Below: The Deoband Movement and Global Islam (University of California Press, 2018) by Brannon D. Ingram is a timely study of the Deoband movement from its inception in India to its tr...

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Aimée Israel-Pelletier, "On the Mediterranean and the Nile: The Jews of Egypt" (Indiana UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In On the Mediterranean and the Nile: The Jews of Egypt (Indiana University Press, 2017), Aimée Israel-Pelletier, Professor and Head of French at the University of Texas at Arlington, looks at the...

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Daromir Rudnyckyj, "Beyond Debt: Islamic Experiments in Global Finance" (U Chicago Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Recent economic crises have made the centrality of debt, and the instability it creates, increasingly apparent. In Beyond Debt: Islamic Experiments in Global Finance (University of Chicago Press, 2...

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Jamal Elias, "Alef is for Allah: Childhood, Emotion, and Visual Culture in Islamic Societies" (U California Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In his groundbreaking new book, Alef is for Allah: Childhood, Emotion, and Visual Culture in Islamic Societies (University of California Press, 2018), Jamal Elias takes his readers on a riveting in...

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Ben Gatling, "Expressions of Sufi Culture in Tajikistan" (U Wisconsin Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

George Mason University professor Ben Gatling’s debut book, Expressions of Sufi Culture in Tajikistan (University of Wisconsin Press, 2018), is a beautifully written ethnography exploring the lives...

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Sarah Thomsen Vierra, "Turkish Germans in the Federal Republic of Germany: Immigration, Space, and Belonging, 1961-1990" (Cambridge UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

After years of being overlooked, there has been a growing interest among academic historians in the history of Turkish Guest Workers in West Germany. In her new book, Turkish Germans in the Federal...

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Omid Safi, “Radical Love: Teachings from the Islamic Mystical Tradition” (Yale UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

It's often touted that Rumi is one of the best-selling poets in the United States. That may be the case but popular renderings of the writings of this 13th-century Muslim have largely detached him ...

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Patrick Eisenlohr, "Sounding Islam: Voice, Media, and Sonic Atmospheres in an Indian Ocean World" (U California Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Sounding Islam: Voice, Media, and Sonic Atmospheres in an Indian Ocean World(University of California Press, 2018) by Patrick Eisenlohr is an exciting ethnographic study of Mauritian Muslims’ sound...

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James R. Rush, "Hamka's Great Story: A Master Writer’s Vision of Islam for Modern Indonesia" (U Wisconsin Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

From Indonesia’s declaration of independence in 1945 up until today, the relationship between Indonesian nationalism, Islam, and modernity has been a key subject of debate. One of the central figur...

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Hüseyin Y?lmaz, "Caliphate Redefined: The Mystical Turn in Ottoman Political Thought" (Princeton UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In Islamic intellectual history, it is generally assumed that the Ottomans did not contribute much to Islamic thought. With his new book, Caliphate Redefined: The Mystical Turn in Ottoman Political...

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McKenzie Wark, "General Intellects: Twenty-One Thinkers for the Twenty-First Century" (Verso, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

McKenzie Wark’s new book offers 21 focused studies of thinkers working in a wide range of fields who are worth your attention. The chapters of General Intellects: Twenty-One Thinkers for the Twenty...

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Alireza Doostdar, "The Iranian Metaphysicals: Explorations in Science, Islam, and the Uncanny" (Princeton UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Winner of the Middle East Studies Association’s 2018 Albert Hourani Book Award, Alireza Doostdar’s The Iranian Metaphysicals: Explorations in Science, Islam, and the Uncanny (Princeton University P...

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Aasim Sajjad Akhtar, "The Politics of Common Sense: State, Society and Culture in Pakistan" (Cambridge UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

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 ha...

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Sumantra Bose, "Secular States, Religious Politics, India, Turkey and the Future of Secularism" (Cambridge UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

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 parti...

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Shenila Khoja-Moolji, “Forging an Ideal Educated Girl: The Production of Desirable Subjects in Muslim South Asia” (U California Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

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 mono...

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Daniel Stolz, “The Lighthouse and the Observatory: Islam, Science, and Empire in Late Ottoman Egypt” (Cambridge UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

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 s...

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Anand Taneja, “Jinnealogy: Time, Islam, and Ecological Thought in the Medieval Ruins of Delhi” from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

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 practi...

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Sylvia Chan-Malik, “Being Muslim: A Cultural History of Women of Color in American Islam” (NYU Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

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 Studie...

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Samuel Helfont, “Compulsion in Religion: Saddam Hussein, Islam and the Roots of Insurgencies in Iraq” (Oxford UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

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 st...

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Irfan Ahmad, “Religion as Critique: Islamic Critical Thinking from Mecca to the Marketplace” (UNC Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

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 poli...

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Merin Shobhana Xavier, “Sacred Spaces and Transnational Networks in American Sufism: Bawa Muhaiyaddeen and Contemporary Shrine Cultures” (Bloomsbury Academic, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

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 S...

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Courtney Freer, “Rentier Islamism: The Influence of the Muslim Brotherhood in Gulf Monarchies” (OUP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

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 mo...

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Lev Weitz, “Between Christ and Caliph: Law, Marriage, and Christian Community in Early Islam” (U Pennsylvania Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

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 Christia...

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Harold Morales, “Latino and Muslim in America: Race, Religion, and the Making of a New Minority” (Oxford UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

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 Minorit...

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Cyrus Ali Zargar, “The Polished Mirror: Storytelling and the Pursuit of Virtue in Islamic Philosophy and Sufism” (Oneworld, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

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, ...

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Ahmad Dallal, “Islam without Europe: Traditions of Reform in Eighteenth-Century Islamic Thought” (UNC Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

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 intellectua...

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Eren Tasar, “Soviet and Muslim: The Institutionalization of Islam in Central Asia” (Oxford UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How was the Soviet Union able to avoid issues of religious and national conflict with its large and diverse Islamic population? In his new book, Soviet and Muslim: The Institutionalization of Islam...

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John O’Brien, “Keeping it Halal: The Everyday Lives of Muslim American Teenage Boys” (Princeton UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

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 ...

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Ata Anzali, “‘Mysticism’ in Iran: The Safavid Roots of a Modern Concept” (U South Carolina Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

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, ...

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Alexander Bevilacqua, “The Republic of Arabic Letters: Islam and the European Enlightenment” (Harvard UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

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...

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Zoltan Pall, “Salafism in Lebanon: Local and Transnational Movements” (Cambridge UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

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 Mus...

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Elias Muhanna, “The World in a Book: Al-Nuwayri and the Islamic Encyclopedic Tradition” (Princeton UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

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 e...

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Mehrzad Boroujerdi and Kourosh Rahimkhani, “Postrevolutionary Iran: A Political Handbook” (Syracuse UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

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 re...

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Ramon Harvey, “The Qur’an and the Just Society” (Edinburgh UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

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 ...

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Samuel England, “Medieval Empires and the Cultures of Competition: Literary Duels at Islamic and Christian Courts” (Edinburgh UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

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, Assista...

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Sophia Rose Arjana, “Veiled Superheroes: Islam, Feminism, and Popular Culture” (Lexington Books, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

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 f...

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Walter N. Hakala, “Negotiating Languages: Urdu, Hindi, and the Definition of Modern South Asia” (Columbia UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

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 ...

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Jannica Budde, “Turkish Women Writers in German Cities” (Königshausen and Neumann, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

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...

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Mehal Krayem, “Heroes, Villains and the Muslim Exception: Muslim and Arab Men in Australian Crime Drama” (Melbourne UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

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 ...

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Justine Howe, "The Routledge Handbook of Islam and Gender" (Routledge, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The Routledge Handbook of Islam and Gender (Routledge, 2020), edited by Justine Howe, includes an excellent introduction to Islam and gender as well as to the volume and 31 content chapters, writte...

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Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst, “Indian Muslim Minorities and the 1857 Rebellion: Religion, Rebels and Jihad” (I. B. Tauris, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

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 Relig...

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David Henig, "Remaking Muslim Lives: Everyday Islam in Postwar Bosnia and Herzegovina" (U Illinois Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The violent disintegration of Yugoslavia and the cultural and economic dispossession caused by the collapse of socialism continue to force Muslims in Bosnia and Herzegovina to reconfigure their rel...

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Joshua Parens, “Leo Strauss and the Recovery of Medieval Political Philosophy” (U Rochester Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

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). Whi...

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Saiba Varma, "The Occupied Clinic: Militarism and Care in Kashmir" (Duke UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In The Occupied Clinic: Militarism and Care in Kashmir (Duke UP, 2020), Saiba Varma explores the psychological, ontological, and political entanglements between medicine and violence in Indian-cont...

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William R. Polk, “Crusade and Jihad: The Thousand-Year War Between the Muslim World and the Global North” (Yale UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

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 relat...

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Tony K. Stewart, "Witness to Marvels: Sufism and Literary Imagination" (U California Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

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

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Mehammed Mack, “Sexagon: Muslims, France, and the Sexualization of National Culture” (Fordham UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

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...

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Anne K. Bang, "Islamic Sufi Networks in the Western Indian Ocean (c.1880-1940): Ripples of Reform" (Brill, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In the period c. 1880-1940, organized Sufism spread rapidly in the western Indian Ocean. New communities turned to Islam, and Muslim communities turned to new texts, practices, and religious leader...

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Fareen Parvez, “Politicizing Islam: The Islamic Revival in France and India (Oxford UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

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 ...

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Diana Darke, "Stealing from the Saracens: How Islamic Architecture Shaped Europe" (Hurst, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Visitors around the world have travelled to Europe to see the tall spires and stained glass windows of the continent’s Gothic cathedrals: in Cologne, Chartres, Milan, Florence, York and Paris. The ...

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Alexander Orwin, “Redefining the Muslim Community: Ethnicity, Religion, and Politics in the Thought of Alfarabi” (U Penn Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

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 “se...

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Tabassum Fahim Ruby, "Muslim Women's Rights: Contesting Liberal-Secular Sensibilities in Canada" (Routledge, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Muslim Women’s Rights: Contesting Liberal-Secular Sensibilities in Canada (Routledge 2019) By Tabassum Fahim Ruby follows the legal debates and public discussions that surrounded the proposed shari...

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Sadek Hamid, “Sufis, Salafis and Islamists: The Contested Grounds of British Islamic Activism” (I.B. Tauris, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

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 te...

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David Rundell, "Vision or Mirage: Saudi Arabia at the Crossroads" (I. B. Tauris, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

David Rundell brings to his book, Vision or Mirage: Saudi Arabia at the Crossroads (I. B. Tauris, 2020), a granular analysis and insider’s understanding of the inner workings of the kingdom garnere...

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Ian Black, “Enemies and Neighbors: Arabs and Jews in Palestine and Israel, 1917-2017” (Atlantic Monthly Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

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 ...

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Antonia Bosanquet, "Minding their Place: Space and Religious Hierarchy in Ibn al-Qayyim’s A?k?m ahl al-dhimma" (Brill, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How was the relationship between Muslim and non-Muslim communities theologically and spatially imagined in the premodern world? How did religious hierarchies map onto notions of place and spatial d...

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Ammara Maqsood, “The New Pakistani Middle Class” (Harvard UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

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 n...

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Alexander Thurston, “Boko Haram: The History of an African Jihadist Movement” (Princeton UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

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...

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Alexander Knysh, “Sufism: A New History” (Princeton UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

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 pr...

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Mark Sedgwick, “Western Sufism: From the Abbasids to the New Age” (Oxford UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

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 S...

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Joel Blecher, “Said the Prophet of God: Hadith Commentary Across a Millennium” (U. Cal Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

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 Un...

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Leslie Kealhofer-Kemp, “Muslim Women in French Cinema: Voices of Maghrebi Migrants in France” (Liverpool UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

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 Wome...

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Ula Yvette Taylor, “The Promise of Patriarchy: Women and the Nation of Islam” (UNC Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

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 a...

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Elizabeth Bucar, “Pious Fashion: How Muslim Women Dress” (Harvard UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

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:...

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Jessica Marglin, “Across Legal Lines: Jews and Muslims in Modern Morocco” (Yale UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

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 p...

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Rafia Zakaria, “Veil” (Bloomsbury Academic, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

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, journa...

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Sophia Rose Arjana, “Pilgrimage in Islam: Traditional and Modern Practices” (Oneworld Publications, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

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. Pilg...

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Reina Lewis, “Muslim Fashion: Contemporary Style Cultures” (Duke UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

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 3...

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Kristian Petersen, “Interpreting Islam in China: Pilgrimage, Language, and Scripture in the Han Kitab” (Oxford UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In his monumental new book, Interpreting Islam in China: Pilgrimage, Language, and Scripture in the Han Kitab (Oxford University Press, 2017), Kristian Petersen, Assistant Professor of Religious St...

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George Kiraz on Gorgias Press (NBn, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

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. Ba...

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Adam Gaiser, “Shurat Legends, Ibadi Identities: Martyrdom, Asceticism and the Making of an Early Islamic Community” (U. South Carolina Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

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 ...

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David L. Weddle, “Sacrifice in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam” (NYU Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

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 t...

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Bruce B. Lawrence, “The Koran in English: A Biography” (Princeton UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

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 ...

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Cyrus Schayegh, “The Middle East and the Making of the Modern World” (Harvard UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The question of how to write the history of the modern Middle East is a much contested one. Do we write national histories, focused on modern-nation states? Do we treat the Middle East as an integr...

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Mairaj Syed, “Coercion and Responsibility in Islam: A Study in Ethics and Law” (Oxford UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Within a few generations after the death of Muhammad Muslims developed complex legal and theological traditions that shaped the boundaries of what was deemed Islamic. In Coercion and Responsibility...

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Faegheh Shirazi, “Brand Islam: The Marketing and Commodification of Piety” (U. Texas Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Religion is big business nowadays. Within the global context of Muslim consumers Islamic commodities have become increasingly popular over the past few decades. Faegheh Shirazi, Professor in the De...

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Patricia Sloane-White, “Corporate Islam: Sharia and the Modern Workplace” (Cambridge UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The relationship between religion and economic activity has attracted generations of scholars working in myriad settings. In recent years, many have turned to questions of how Islamic ideas are gen...

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Mengia Hong Tschalaer, “Muslim Women’s Quest for Justice: Gender, Law and Activism in India” (Cambridge UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In her inspiring new book, Muslim Women’s Quest for Justice: Gender, Law and Activism in India (Cambridge University Press, 2017), Mengia Hong Tschalaer charts the strivings and creative struggles ...

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Hussein Fancy, “The Mercenary Mediterranean: Sovereignty, Religion, and Violence in the Medieval Crown of Aragon” (U of Chicago Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Hussein Fancy’s book The Mercenary Mediterranean: Sovereignty, Religion, and Violence in the Medieval Crown of Aragon (University of Chicago Press, 2016) begins with the description of five Muslim ...

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Manan Ahmed Asif, “A Book of Conquest: The Chachnama and Muslim Origins in South Asia” (Harvard UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In contemporary South Asia, the question of Muslim origins emerges in school textbooks, political dialogues, or at tourist or pilgrimage cites. The repeated narrative revolves around the foreign Mu...

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Andreas Gorke and Johanna Pink, “Tafsir and Islamic Intellectual History: Exploring the Boundaries of a Genre” (Oxford UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What does it mean to interpret the Qur’an? What kinds of literary genres have produced and continue to produce such inquiry? Is tafsir only a line-by-line commentary or could it be something broade...

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Nader Hashimi and Danny Postel, eds. “Sectarianization: Mapping the New Politics of the Middle East” (Oxford UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The term ‘sectarianism’ has dominated much of the discourse on the Middle East and dictates that much of the unrest in the region is due to religious and cultural differences stemming back centurie...

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Sarah Eltantawi, “Shari’ah on Trial: Northern Nigeria’s Islamic Revolution” (U. California Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Few images attached to Islam and to the Islamic legal tradition (the Sharia) in particular are more often and more disturbingly sensationalized than that of the stoning punishment. In her riveting ...

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Pooyan Tamimi Arab, “Amplifying Islam in the European Soundscape” (Bloomsbury, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In mid-March, Europeans observed the Dutch national elections with intense interest. Onlookers believed that a victory of the Party for Freedom led by Geert Wilders will influence the results of co...

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Blake Atwood, “Reform Cinema in Iran: Film and Political Change in the Islamic Republic” (Columbia UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Iranian cinema has close connections to the 1979 Islamic revolution. Ayatollah Khomeini , explicitly pointed to the uses of cinema for religious and revolutionary political purposes. But Iranian fi...

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Erik Love, “Islamophobia and Racism in America” (NYU Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In his new book, Islamophobia and Racism in America (New York University Press, 2017), Sociologist Erik Love provides a historical and current snapshot of civil rights issues surrounding people fro...

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Michael Muhammad Knight, “Tripping with Allah: Islam, Drugs, and Writing” (Soft Skull Press, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Michael Muhammed Knight writes this book from a first-person perspective, as a piece of creative non-fiction. The book includes a liberal amount of swearing and sexual references, and Knight’s wri...

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Brad Gooch, “Rumi’s Secret: The Life of the Sufi Poet of Love” (Harper, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Ever since their composition in the 13th century the poems of the Persian writer Rumi have enthralled millions of readers around the world. In Rumi’s Secret: The Life of the Sufi Poet of Love (Ha...

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Armando Salvatore, “Sociology of Islam: Knowledge, Power, Civility” (Wiley, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Armando Salvatore’s (Professor Global Religious Studies, McGill University) formidable new book Sociology of Islam: Knowledge, Power, Civility (Wiley, 2016) is a dense yet delightful meditation on ...

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Jeanette Jouili, “Pious Practice and Secular Constraints: Women in the Islamic Revival in Europe” (Stanford UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Jeanette Jouili‘s fascinating new book Pious Practice and Secular Constraints: Women in the Islamic Revival in Europe (Stanford University Press, 2015) navigates practices and challenges of living ...

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Cemil Aydin, “The Idea of the Muslim World: A Global Intellectual History” (Harvard UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Almost daily in popular media the Muslim World is pinpointed as a homogeneous entity that stands separate and parallel to the similarly imagined West. But even scratching the surface of the idea of...

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S. Brent Plate ed., “Key Terms in Material Religion” (Bloomsbury, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In recent years, several scholars of religion have moved away from the examination of discursive textual domains or the meaning of ritual practices towards analyzing the material worlds in which th...

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Rosemary Corbett, “Making Moderate Islam: Sufism, Service, and the ‘Ground Zero Mosque’ Controversy” (Stanford UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Among the most powerful and equally insidious aspects of the new global politics of religion is the discourse of religious moderation that seeks to produce moderate religious subjects at ease with ...

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Rebecca Gould, “Writers and Rebels: Literature of Insurgency in the Caucasus” (Yale UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Rebecca Gould‘s Writers and Rebels: Literature of Insurgency in the Caucasus (Yale University Press, 2016) is the first existing comparative study of Chechen, Dagestani and Georgian literatures and...

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Brandon Kendhammer, “Muslims Talking Politics: Framing Islam, Democracy and Law in Northern Nigeria” (U. Chicago Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Brandon Kendhammer takes a fresh approach to the juxtaposition of Islam and democracy in his latest book, Muslims Talking Politics: Framing Islam, Democracy and Law in Northern Nigeria (University ...

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Audrey Truschke, “Culture of Encounters: Sanskrit at the Mughal Court” (Columbia UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Contemporary scholarship on the Mughal empire has generally ignored the role Sanskrit played in imperial political and literary projects. However, in Culture of Encounters: Sanskrit at the Mughal C...

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Joseph Lumbard, “The Study Quran: A New Translation and Commentary” (HarperOne, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The Study Quran: A New Translation and Commentary (HarperOne, 2015) represents years of effort from a team of dedicated translators and editors (Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Joseph Lumbard, Maria Dakake, C...

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Brian T. Edwards, “After the American Century: The Ends of U.S. Culture in the Middle East” (Columbia UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

American culture is ubiquitous across the globe. It travels to different social contexts and is consumed by international populations. But the relationship between American culture and the meanings...

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Iza Hussin, “The Politics of Islamic Law: Local Elites, Colonial Authority, and the Making of the Muslim State” (U. of Chicago Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In her fascinating new book The Politics of Islamic Law: Local Elites, Colonial Authority, and the Making of the Muslim State (University of Chicago Press, 2017), Iza Hussin, Lecturer of Politics a...

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Nathan Hofer, “The Popularisation of Sufism in Ayyubid and Mamluk Egypt, 1173-1325” (Edinburgh UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Medieval Egypt had a rapid influx of Sufis, which has previously been explained through reactionary models of analysis. It was argued that the widespread popularity of Sufism was marked by a public...

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Abigail Jacobson and Moshe Naor, “Oriental Neighbors: Middle Eastern Jews and Arabs in Mandatory Palestine” (Brandeis UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Much of the existing literature on Mandatory Palestine adheres to a dual society model which assumes that the Palestinian Arab community and the Jewish Yishuv had separate economic, social, and cul...

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Amir Hussain, “Muslims and the Making of America” (Baylor UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Muslims and the Making of America (Baylor University Press, 2016) offers a succinct and gripping account of Muslim presence in the United States. The book gives attention to the contemporary moment...

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Noah Salomon, “For Love of the Prophet: An Ethnography of Sudan’s Islamic State (Princeton UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In popular discourse today, few concepts are more sensationalized and maliciously caricatured than that of the Islamic State. In his fascinating new book For Love of the Prophet: An Ethnography of ...

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Victor Taki, “Tsar and Sultan: Russian Encounters with the Ottoman Empire” (I.B. Taurus, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Victor Taki’s Tsar and Sultan: Russian Encounters with the Ottoman Empire (I.B. Taurus, 2016) invites the reader to explore the captivating story of the relationship of the Russian and Ottoman Empi...

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Lena Salaymeh, “Beginnings of Islamic Law: Late Antique Islamicate Legal Traditions” (Cambridge UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In her brilliant new book Beginnings of Islamic Law: Late Antique Islamicate Legal Traditions (Cambridge University Press, 2016), Lena Salaymeh, Associate Professor of Law at Tel Aviv University, p...

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Christian Lange, “Paradise and Hell in Islamic Traditions” (Cambridge UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Christian Lange’s Paradise and Hell in Islamic Traditions (Cambridge University Press, 2015), which was recently awarded the British-Kuwaiti Friendship Society’s Book Prize, presents a rich, challe...

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Behrooz Ghamari-Tabrizi, “Foucault in Iran: Islamic Revolution after the Enlightenment” (U. of Minnesota Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How did the preeminent theorist and philosopher Michel Foucault experience and observe the Iranian revolution? How did he find the revolution disruptive of a teleological notion of history? And how...

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Nile Green, “Terrains of Exchange: Religious Economies of Global Islam” (Oxford UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The historical convergence of European imperialism and technological innovation in communication and travel made multiple social sites of intersection between the local and global possible. Nile Gr...

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Rory Dickson, “Living Sufism in North America: Tradition and Transformation” (SUNY Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Rory Dickson’s Living Sufism in North America: Between Tradition and Transformation (SUNY Press, 2015) is the first monograph in English to focus on Sufism in North America. On this note, Dickson t...

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Ahmed Ragab, “The Medieval Islamic Hospital: Medicine, Religion, Charity” (Cambridge UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In his shining new book The Medieval Islamic Hospital: Medicine, Religion, and Charity (Cambridge University Press, 2015), Ahmed Ragab, Assistant Professor of Religion and Science at Harvard Divini...

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Matthew Pierce, “Twelve Infallible Men: The Imams and the Making of Shiism” (Harvard UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The story of the martyrdom of Husayn, the prophet Muhammad’s grandson, is recounted annually around the world. More broadly, the communal retelling of the lives of Shia imams has played an importan...

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Todd Green, “The Fear of Islam: An Introduction to Islamophobia in the West” (Fortress Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Islamophobia, both as a term and concept, has a storied and complicated history, and understanding its many layers in our current historical moment remains important for any number of audiences and...

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Paul M. Cobb, “The Race for Paradise: An Islamic History of the Crusades” (Oxford UP, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The Crusades loom large in contemporary popular consciousness. However, our public understanding has largely been informed from a western perspective, despite the fact that there is a rich textual ...

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David Brophy, “Uyghur Nation: Reform and Revolution on the Russia-China Frontier” (Harvard UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Bringing together secondary and primary sources in a wide range of languages, David Brophy’s new book is a masterful study of the modern history of the Uyghurs, the Turkic-speaking Muslims of Xinji...

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Aisha Geissinger, “Gender and the Construction of Exegetical Authority: A Rereading of the Classical Genre of Qur’an Commentary (Brill, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Aisha Geissinger’s monograph, Gender and the Construction of Exegetical Authority: A Rereading of the Classical Genre of Qur’an Commentary (Brill, 2015), contributes to the growing field of interse...

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Ethan Katz, “The Burdens of Brotherhood: Jews and Muslims from North Africa to France” (Harvard UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In The Burdens of Brotherhood: Jews and Muslims from North Africa to France (Harvard University Press, 2015), Ethan Katz examines and interrogates Jewish-Muslim relations from 1914 to the present. ...

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Elizabeth Hurd, “Beyond Religious Freedom: The New Global Politics of Religion” (Princeton UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Among the most frequent demands made of Islam and Muslims today is to become more moderate. But what counts as moderate and who will decide so are questions with less than obvious answers. In her t...

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Sandow Birk, “American Qur’an” (Liveright, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Could the Qur’an–understood, according to Muslims, as the verbatim word of God in Arabic–acquire a nationality? Specifically, could it be American? And written in English? Contemporary visual artis...

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Eid Mohamed, “Arab Occidentalism: Images of America in the Middle East” (I.B. Tauris, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Edward Said’s 1978 book, Orientalism, dramatically shifted how people think about the production of knowledge and representations of the Other. His ideas have been championed and critiqued with doz...

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Michael M. Knight, "Muhammad's Body: Baraka Networks and the Prophetic Assemblage" (UNC Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Muhammad's Body: Baraka Networks and the Prophetic Assemblage by Michael Muhammad Knight (UNC Press, 2020) joins the emerging subfield of literature in Islamic Studies exploring embodiment and mate...

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Dana Sajdi, “The Barber of Damascus: Nouveau Literacy in the Eighteenth-Century Ottoman Levant” (Stanford UP, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In her stunning new book The Barber of Damascus: Nouveau Literacy in the Eighteenth-Century Ottoman Levant (Stanford University Press, 2012), Dana Sajdi, Associate Professor of History at Boston Co...

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Jon Hoover, "Ibn Taymiyya" (Oneworld, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Ibn Taymiyya is one of the most prolific and influential Islamic thinkers to date, and was even the only pre-modern Muslim author cited in the 9/11 Report. His supporters and detractors alike have ...

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Asma Afsaruddin, “Contemporary Issues in Islam” (Edinburgh UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

As the title of the monograph suggests, Contemporary Issues in Islam (Edinburgh University Press, 2015) by Asma Afsaruddin, guides the reader through an organized and compelling narrative of reflec...

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John Tolan, "Faces of Muhammad: Western Perceptions of the Prophet of Islam from the Middle Ages to Today" (Princeton UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

John Tolan’s latest book Faces of Muhammad: Western Perceptions of the Prophet of Islam from the Middle Ages to Today (Princeton UP, 2019) is a fascinating and rich survey of the complex perception...

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Randy Roberts and Johnny Smith, “Blood Brothers: The Fatal Friendship Between Muhammad Ali and Malcolm X” (Basic Books, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Is there a figure in sports more admired and beloved than Muhammad Ali? Widely revered not only as one of boxing’s greatest champions but also as one of the rare athletes to speak out on political ...

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Danielle Haque, “Interrogating Secularism: Race and Religion in Arab Transnational Art and Literature” (Syracuse UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In many popular accounts of contemporary “Western” society there is an inherent contradiction between the principles underlying liberal secularism and Islam. This type of binary discourse about “re...

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Adeeb Khalid, “Making Uzbekistan: Nation, Empire, and Revolution in the Early USSR” (Cornell UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In what promises to become a classic, Adeeb Khalid’s (Professor of History, Carleton College), Making Uzbekistan: Nation, Empire, and Revolution in the Early USSR (Cornell University Press, 2015) e...

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Margrit Pernau, "Emotions and Modernity in Colonial India: From Balance to Fervor" (Oxford UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In her stunning and conceptually adventurous new book Emotions and Modernity in Colonial India: From Balance to Fervor (Oxford University Press, 2020), Margrit Pernau examines the varied and hugely...

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Seth Kimmel, “Parables of Coercion: Conversion and Knowledge at the End of Islamic Spain” (U of Chicago Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In his path clearing new book, Parables of Coercion: Conversion and Knowledge at the End of Islamic Spain (University of Chicago Press, 2015), Seth Kimmel, Assistant Professor of Latin American and...

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Teren Sevea, "Miracles and Material Life: Rice, Ore, Traps and Guns in Islamic Malaya" (Cambridge UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In Miracles and Material Life: Rice, Ore, Traps and Guns in Islamic Malaya (Cambridge University Press), Teren Sevea reveals the economic, environmental and religious significance of Islamic miracl...

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Kenneth Garden, “The First Islamic Reviver: Abu Hamid al-Ghazali and his Revival of the Religious Sciences” (Oxford UP, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Abu Hamid al-Ghazali (d. 1111) is one of the most famous Muslim thinkers in history. His autobiographical account, The Deliverer from Error, tells us of his spiritual crisis and transformative expe...

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Noel Malcolm, "Useful Enemies: Islam and the Ottoman Empire in Western Political Thought, 1450-1750" (Oxford UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Sir Noel Malcolm’s captivating new book, Useful Enemies: Islam and the Ottoman Empire in Western Political Thought, 1450-1750 (Oxford University Press, 2019), tells the story of Western European fa...

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Eileen M. Kane, “Russian Hajj: Empire and the Pilgrimage to Mecca” (Cornell University Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In her gripping new book Russian Hajj: Empire and the Pilgrimage to Mecca (Cornell University Press, 2015), Eileen M. Kane, Associate Professor of History at Connecticut College, presents a compell...

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Tahseen Shams, "Here, There, and Elsewhere: The Making of Immigrant Identities in a Globalized World" (Stanford UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Here, There, and Elsewhere: The Making of Immigrant Identities in a Globalized World (Stanford University Press, 2020) by Tahseen Shams (Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Toront...

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Kishwar Rizvi, “The Transnational Mosque: Architecture and Historical Memory in the Contemporary Middle East” (UNC Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In her excellent new book The Transnational Mosque: Architecture and Historical Memory in the Contemporary Middle East (UNC Press, 2015), Kishwar Rizvi, Associate Professor of the History of Art at...

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Wilson Chacko Jacob, "For God or Empire: Sayyid Fadl and the Indian Ocean World" (Stanford UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Sayyid Fadl, a descendant of the Prophet Muhammad, led a unique life—one that spanned much of the nineteenth century and connected India, Arabia, and the Ottoman Empire. For God or Empire: Sayyid F...

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Anita Weiss, “Interpreting Islam, Modernity, and Women’s Rights in Pakistan” (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Pakistan is often caricatured and stereotyped as a volatile nuclear country on the precipice of disaster. Such depictions are often especially acerbic when comes to the issue of Women’s rights in t...

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Karen Taliaferro, "The Possibility of Religious Freedom: Early Natural Law and the Abrahamic Faiths" (Cambridge UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Religious freedom debates set blood boiling. Just consider notable Supreme Court cases of recent years such as Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission or Little Sisters of the Poor...

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Ron Grigor Suny, “They Can Live in the Desert but Nowhere Else: A History of the Armenian Genocide” (Princeton UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Anniversaries are funny things. Sometimes, as with the hundredth anniversary of the outbreak of the First World War, they are accompanied by a flood of discussion and debate. Other times they are ...

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Earle H. Waugh, “Al Rashid Mosque: Building Canadian Muslim Communities” (U Alberta Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In the early 20th-century Muslims, primarily with roots in Lebanon, began to settle in Canada’s interior plains. In 1938, the small community in Edmonton opened the first mosque in the country, whi...

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Patrick Bowen, “A History of Conversion to Islam in the United States, Vol 1: White American Muslims before 1975” (Brill, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In the current political moment there is widespread anti-Muslim rhetoric and it would be easy to conclude that a large portion of white Americans see Islam at odds with American values. But a longe...

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Abla Hasan, "Decoding the Egalitarianism of the Qur’an: Retrieving Lost Voices on Gender" (Lexington Books, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Is it possible to interpret the Qur’an using the Qur’an alone? Is a feminist interpretation of controversial verses such as 4:34, the notorious “wife-beating” verse, possible? What evidence is ther...

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Marcia C. Inhorn, “The New Arab Man: Emergent Masculinities, Technologies, and Islam in the Middle East” (Princeton UP, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Winner of the 2015 American Anthropological Associations Robert B. Textor and Family Prize for Excellence in Anticipatory Anthropology and the 2014 JMEWS Book Award of the Association for Middle Ea...

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Nicholas H. A. Evans, "Far from the Caliph’s Gaze: Being Ahmadi Muslim in the Holy City of Qadian" (Cornell UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

A sustained and compelling critique of the doubt/belief binary in the anthropology of religion and Islam, Nicholas H. A. Evans’ Far from the Caliph’s Gaze: Being Ahmadi Muslim in the Holy City of Q...

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Zeki Saritoprak, “Islam’s Jesus” (University of Florida Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In Islam’s Jesus (University of Florida Press, 2015), Zeki Saritoprak explores an old topic from a fresh perspective. The status of Jesus in Islam has been of interest for centuries, and relates to...

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Rachel M. Gillum, "Muslims in a Post-9/11 America" (U Michigan Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Muslims in a Post-9/11 America (University of Michigan Press, 2018) examines how public fears about Muslims in the United States compare with the reality of American Muslims’ attitudes on a range o...

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Alice J. Kang, “Bargaining for Women’s Rights: Activism in an Aspiring Muslim Democracy” (U of Minnesota Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Alice J. Kang has written Bargaining for Women’s Rights: Activism in an Aspiring Muslim Democracy (University of Minnesota Press, 2015). Kang is assistant professor of political science and ethnic ...

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E. Bazzano and M. Hermansen, "Varieties of American Sufism" (SUNY Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Sufism in America is now a developed sub-field of study that exists at the intersection of Islamic Studies, American religions, and popular spirituality. Varieties of American Sufism: Islam, Sufi O...

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Maud S. Mandel, “Muslims and Jews in France: History of a Conflict” (Princeton University Press, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In Muslims and Jews in France: History of a Conflict (Princeton University Press, 2014), Maud S. Mandel, Dean of the College at Brown University, challenges the view that rising anti-Semitism in Fr...

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Majid Daneshgar, "Studying the Qur’an in the Muslim Academy" (Oxford UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

“Consider the works of the renowned Nobel-prize-winning African American writer, literary and social critic, and activist Toni Morrison (b. 1931),” writes Majid Daneshgar. “Hers—like Said’s—are pop...

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Jorg Matthias Determann, “Researching Biology and Evolution in the Gulf States: Networks of Science in the Middle East” (I. B. Tauris, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Jorg Matthias Determann‘s new book looks at the history of modern biology in the Arab Gulf monarchies, focusing on the treatment of evolution and related concepts in the publications of biologists ...

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Sean Roberts, "The War on the Uyghurs: China’s Internal Campaign against a Muslim Minority" (Princeton UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In today’s new episode, we speak with Sean Roberts about his brand new book The War on the Uyghurs: China’s Internal Campaign against a Muslim Minority (Princeton University Press, 2020). Roberts i...

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Hina Azam, “Sexual Violation in Islamic Law: Substance, Evidence, and Procedure” (Cambridge UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In her shining new book Sexual Violation in Islamic Law: Substance, Evidence, and Procedure (Cambridge University Press, 2015), Hina Azam, Assistant Professor of Middle Eastern Studies at the Unive...

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Muhammed Fraser-Rahim, "America’s Other Muslims" (Lexington Books, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

America's Other Muslims: Imam W.D. Mohammed, Islamic Reform, and the Making of American Islam explores the oldest and perhaps the most important Muslim community in America, whose story has receive...

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Naser Ghobadzadeh, “Religious Secularity: A Theological Challenge to the Islamic State” (Oxford UP, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

While “fundamentalism” and “authoritarian secularism” are commonly perceived as the two mutually exclusive paradigms available to Muslim majority countries Naser Ghobadzadeh‘s new book Religious Se...

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Audrey Truschke, “Aurangzeb: The Life and Legacy of India's Most Controversial King” (Stanford UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

For many, the history of the Mughal empire looms heavy over contemporary South Asian social imaginaries. The lightning rod figure within modern day myths about the past is the Mughal emperor Aurang...

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Paul L. Heck, “Skepticism in Classical Islam: Moments of Confusion” (Routledge, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Skepticism is a familiar term to many of us conjuring up notions of doubt, uncertainty, and perhaps even unbelief. Yet, Skepticism did not always have such a narrow meaning. In fact Skepticism has ...

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Shankar Nair, "Translating Wisdom: Hindu-Muslim Intellectual Interactions in Early Modern South Asia" (U California Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Shankar Nair’s new book Translating Wisdom: Hindu-Muslim Intellectual Interactions in Early Modern South Asia (University of California Press, 2020) is an intellectually daring and dazzlingly imagi...

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Karen Bauer, “Gender Hierarchy in the Qur’an: Medieval Interpretations, Modern Responses” (Cambridge UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In Gender Hierarchy in the Qur’an: Medieval Interpretations, Modern Responses (Cambridge University Press, 2015), Dr. Karen Bauer tackles one of the foremost hot-button questions of the day: What i...

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A. Meleagrou-Hitchens, "Incitement: Anwar al-Awlaki’s Western Jihad" (Harvard UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Anwar al-Awlaki was, according to one of his followers, “the main man who translated jihad into English.” By the time he was killed by an American drone strike in 2011, he had become a spiritual le...

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Azizah al-Hibri, “The Islamic Worldview: Islamic Jurisprudence” (ABA Books, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How can a perspective on Islamic law and jurisprudence be constructed responding to the lives and practices of diasporic Muslims while remaining deeply grounded in the foundational texts of the rel...

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Zachary Valentine Wright, "Realizing Islam: The Tijaniyya in North Africa and the 18th-Century Muslim World" (UNC Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Realizing Islam: The Tijaniyya in North Africa and the Eighteenth-Century Muslim World (The University of North Carolina Press 2020) by Zachary Valentine Wright (Associate Professor in Residence in...

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Debra Majeed, “Polygyny: What it Means When African American Muslim Women Share Their Husbands” (UP of Florida, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In her wonderful new book Polygyny: What it Means When African American Muslim Women Share Their Husbands (University Press of Florida, 2015), Debra Majeed, Professor of Religious Studies at Beloit...

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Jered Rubin, "Rulers, Religion, and Riches: Why the West Got Rich and the Middle East Did Not" (Cambridge UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Rulers, Religion, and Riches: Why the West Got Rich and the Middle East Did Not (Cambridge UP, 2020) addresses one of the big questions in economics and economic history: why did the modern economy...

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Guy Burak, “The Second Formation of Islamic Law: The Hanafi School in the Early Modern Ottoman Empire” (Cambridge UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The Second Formation of Islamic Law: The Hanafi School in the Early Modern Ottoman Empire (Cambridge UP, 2015) is a new contribution to the study of Islam and more specifically to the history of Is...

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David G. Atwill, "Islamic Shangri-La: Inter-Asian Relations and Lhasa’s Muslim Communities, 1600 to 1960" (U California Press 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Centering on the Tibetan Muslims (the Khache) from the seventeenth century to the twentieth century, Islamic Shangri-La: Inter-Asian Relations and Lhasa’s Muslim Communities, 1600 to 1960 (Universi...

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Christopher R. Duncan, “Violence and Vengeance: Religious Conflict and Its Aftermath in Eastern Indonesia” (Cornell UP, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Researching the communal killings that occurred in North Maluku, Indonesia during 1999 and 2000, Christopher Duncan was struck by how participants “experienced the violence as a religious conflict ...

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Lesley Hazleton, “After the Prophet: The Epic Story of the Shia-Sunni Split” (Doubleday, 2009) from 2011-03-07T20:28

Sometimes a shallow explanation, the kind you read in newspapers and hear on television, is enough. “The home team was beaten at the buzzer” is probably all you need to know. Sometimes, however, it...

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Lesley Hazleton, “After the Prophet: The Epic Story of the Shia-Sunni Split” (Doubleday, 2009) from 2011-03-07T20:28

Sometimes a shallow explanation, the kind you read in newspapers and hear on television, is enough. “The home team was beaten at the buzzer” is probably all you need to know. Sometimes, however, it...

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Podcasts by New Books in Islamic Studies

All episodes

On Edward Said's "Orientalism" from 2022-11-08T09:00

S. Daulatzai and J. Rana, “With Stones in Our Hands: Reflections on Racism, Muslims and US Empire” (U Minnesota Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Aysha Hidayatullah, “Feminist Edges of the Qur’an” (Oxford UP, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Ulrike Freitag, "A History of Jeddah: The Gate to Mecca in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries" (Cambridge UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Kecia Ali, “The Lives of Muhammad” (Harvard UP, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Alyssa Gabbay, "Gender and Succession in Medieval and Early Modern Islam" (I.B. Tauris, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Bruce B. Lawrence, “Who is Allah?” (UNC Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Nathan Spannaus, "Preserving Islamic Tradition: Abu Nasr Qursawi and the Beginnings of Modern Reformism" (Oxford UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

James Gelvin, “The Arab Uprisings: What Everyone Needs to Know” (Oxford UP, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Gaurav Desai, "Commerce with the Universe: Africa, India, and the Afrasian Imagination" (Columbia UP, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Venkat Dhulipala, “Creating a New Medina: State Power, Islam, and the Quest for Pakistan in Late Colonial North India” (Cambridge UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Asma Barlas, "Believing Women in Islam: Unreading Patriarchal Interpretations of the Qur’an" (U Texas Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Emran El-Badawi, “The Qur’an and the Aramaic Gospel Traditions” (Routledge, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Khurram Hussain, "Islam as Critique: Sayyid Ahmad Khan and the Challenge of Modernity" (Bloomsbury Academic, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Ebrahim Moosa, “What is a Madrasa?” (U of North Carolina Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Iraj Bashiri, "The History of the Civil War in Tajikistan" (Lexington Books, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

James Laine, “Meta-Religion: Religion and Power in World History” (U of California Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Shahla Haeri, "The Unforgettable Queens of Islam: Succession, Authority and Gender" (Cambridge UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Denis Dragovic, “Religion and Post-Conflict Statebuilding: Roman Catholic and Sunni Islamic Perspectives” (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Assan Sarr, "Islam, Power, and Dependency in the Gambia River Basin" (Rochester UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Mark S. Wagner, “Jews and Islamic Law in Early 20th-Century Yemen” (Indiana UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Oludamini Ogunnaike, "Poetry in Praise of Prophetic Perfection: A Study of West African Arabic Madih Poetry and its Precedents" (Islamic Texts Society, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Marion Holmes Katz, “Women in the Mosque: A History of Legal Thought and Social Practice” Columbia University Press, 2014 from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Sara Smith, "Intimate Geopolitics: Love, Territory and the Future on India’s Northern Threshold" (Rutgers UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Asma Sayeed, “Women and the Transmission of Religious Knowledge in Islam” (Cambridge UP, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Aliyah Khan,?"Far From Mecca: Globalizing the Muslim Caribbean"?(Rutgers UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Asaad al-Saleh, “Voices of the Arab Spring: Personal Stories from the Arab Revolutions” (Columbia UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Pernilla Myrne, "Female Sexuality in the Early Medieval Islamic World: Gender and Sex in Arabic Literature" (I. B. Tauris, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

F. M. Gocek, “Denial of Violence: Ottoman Past, Turkish Present, and Collective Violence against the Armenians” (Oxford UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Hafsa Lodi,?"Modesty: A Fashion Paradox" (Neem Tree Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Michael Birkel, “Qur’an in Conversation” (Baylor UP, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Ahmed El-Shamsy, "Rediscovering the Islamic Classics" (Princeton UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Jamal Elias, “Aisha’s Cushion” (Harvard UP, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Kevin W. Fogg, "Indonesia’s Islamic Revolution" (Cambridge UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Peter Gottschalk, “Religion, Science, and Empire: Classifying Hinduism and Islam in British India” (Oxford UP, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Johanna Pink, “Muslim Qur??nic Interpretation Today: Media, Genealogies and Interpretive Communities” (Equinox, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

M. Brett Wilson, “Translating the Qur’an in an Age of Nationalism: Print Culture and Modern Islam in Turkey” Oxford University Press, 2014 from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Ayesha Siddiqi, "In the Wake of Disaster: Islamists, the State and a Social Contract in Pakistan" (Cambridge UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Raymond Farrin, “Structure and Qur’anic Interpretation” (White Cloud Press, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Lara Harb, "Arabic Poetics: Aesthetic Experience in Classical Arabic Literature" (Cambridge UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Sophia Rose Arjana, “Muslims in the Western Imagination” (Oxford UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Garrett Felber, "Those Who Know Don't Say: The Nation of Islam, the Black Freedom Movement, and the Carceral State" (UNC Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Cabeiri Robinson, “Body of Victim, Body of Warrior: Refugee Families and the Making of Kashmiri Jihadists” (University of California Press, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Mauro Nobili, "Sultan, Caliph, and the Renewer of the Faith" (Cambridge UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Neilesh Bose, “Recasting the Region: Language, Culture, and Islam in Colonial Bengal” (Oxford UP, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Gabriel Said Reynolds, "Allah: God in the Qur’an" (Yale UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

John Renard, “Islamic Theological Themes: A Primary Source Reader” (U of California Press, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Brian Greene, "Until the End of Time: Mind, Matter, and Our Search for Meaning in an Evolving Universe" (Random House, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Isra Yazicioglu, “Understanding Qur’anic Miracle Stories in the Modern Age” (Penn State UP, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Chiara Formichi, "Islam and Asia: A History" (Cambridge UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Kavita Datla, “The Language of Secular Islam: Urdu Nationalism and Colonial India” from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

M’hamed Oualdi, "A Slave between Empires: A Transimperial History of North Africa" (Columbia UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Michael Hawkins, “Making Moros: Imperial Historicism and American Military Rule in the Philippines’ Muslim South” (NIU Press, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Yassir Morsi, “Radical Skin, Moderate Masks: De-radicalising the Muslim and Racism in Post-racial Societies” (Rowman and Littlefield, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Sahar Amer, “What is Veiling?” (UNC Press, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Jacqueline H. Fewkes, "Locating Maldivian Women's Mosques in Global Discourses" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Vahid Brown and Don Rassler, “Fountainhead of Jihad: The Haqqani Nexus, 1973-2012” (Oxford UP, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Caleb Simmons, "Devotional Sovereignty: Kingship and Religion in India" (Oxford UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Michael Cook, “Ancient Religions, Modern Politics: The Islamic Case in Comparative Perspective” (Princeton UP, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Maria Rashid, "Dying to Serve: Militarism, Affect, and the Politics of Sacrifice in the Pakistan Army" (Stanford UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Amy Evrard, “The Moroccan Women’s Rights Movement” (Syracuse University Press, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Ibrahim Fraihat, "Iran and Saudi Arabia: Taming a Chaotic Conflict" (Edinburgh UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Jonathan A. C. Brown, “Misquoting Muhammad” (Oneworld Publications, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Mallika Kaur, "Faith, Gender, and Activism in the Punjab Conflict: The Wheat Fields Still Whisper" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Amanullah De Sondy, “The Crisis of Islamic Masculinities” (Bloomsbury, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Julia Stephens, “Governing Islam: Law, Empire, and Secularism in Modern South Asia” (Cambridge UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Sarah Bowen Savant, “The New Muslims of Post-Conquest Iran: Tradition, Memory, and Conversion” (Cambridge UP, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Leslie M. Harris, "Slavery and the University: Histories and Legacies" (U Georgia Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Donald Holbrook, “The Al-Qaeda Doctrine: The Framing and Evolution of the Leadership’s Public Discourse” (Bloomsbury, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Ünver Rüstem, "Ottoman Baroque: The Architectural Refashioning of Eighteenth-Century Istanbul" (Princeton UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Iqbal Sevea, “The Political Philosophy of Muhammad Iqbal: Islam and Nationalism in Late Colonial India” (Cambridge UP, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Danielle Ross, "Tatar Empire: Kazan's Muslims and the Making of Imperial Russia" (Indiana UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Nabil Matar, “Henry Stubbe and the Beginnings of Islam: The Originall and Progress of Mahometanism” (Columbia UP, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Courtney M. Dorroll, “Teaching Islamic Studies in the Age of ISIS, Islamophobia and the Internet” (Indiana UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

William Chittick, “Divine Love: Islamic Literature and the Path to God” (Yale UP, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Eric Dursteler, "In the Sultan’s Realm: Two Venetian Reports on the Early Modern Ottoman Empire" (CRRS, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Ovamir Anjum, “Politics, Law, and Community in Islamic Thought: The Taymiyyan Moment” (Cambridge UP, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Christiane Gruber, “The Praiseworthy One: The Prophet Muhammad in Islamic Texts and Images" (Indiana UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393