New Books in Islamic Studies
This podcast is a channel on the New Books Network. The New Books Network is an academic audio library dedicated to public education. In each episode you will hear scholars discuss their recently published research with another expert in their field.
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826
Amanullah De Sondy, “The Crisis of Islamic Masc...
What gets to count as Islam? In the current political climate this question is being repeated in a variety of contexts. The tapestry of various Islamic identities is revealed in an investigation of gender. In The Crisis of Islamic Masculinities (Blooms...
58 min
827
Sarah Bowen Savant, “The New Muslims of Post-Co...
Sarah Bowen Savant, Associate Professor at the Institute for the Study of Muslim Civilisations at the Aga Khan University in London, addresses important questions about conversion among Persian peoples from the ninth to eleventh century CE in her work ...
56 min
828
Donald Holbrook, “The Al-Qaeda Doctrine: The Fr...
Donald Holbrook‘sThe Al-Qaeda Doctrine: The Framing and Evolution of the Leadership’s Public Discourse (Bloomsbury, 2014)represents a significant scholarly contribution to the study of Al-Qaeda and Islamic terrorism more broadly.
55 min
829
Iqbal Sevea, “The Political Philosophy of Muham...
The towering Indian Muslim poet and intellectual Muhammad Iqbal (d. 1938) is among the most contested figures in the intellectual and political history of modern Islam. Heralded by some as the father of Pakistan and by others as a champion of pan-Islam...
54 min
830
Nabil Matar, “Henry Stubbe and the Beginnings o...
In Henry Stubbe and the Beginnings of Islam: The Originall and Progress of Mahometanism (Columbia University Press, 2014), Nabil Matar masterfully edits an important piece of scholarship from seventeenth-century England by scholar and physician,
54 min
831
William Chittick, “Divine Love: Islamic Literat...
Where does love come from and where will it lead us? Throughout the years various answers have been given to these questions. In Divine Love: Islamic Literature and the Path to God (Yale University Press, 2013), William Chittick,
60 min
832
Ovamir Anjum, “Politics, Law, and Community in ...
In Politics, Law, and Community in Islamic Thought: The Taymiyyan Moment (Cambridge University Press, 2012), Ovamir Anjum explores a timely topic, even though his focus is hundreds of years in the past. In order to present his topic Professor Anjum ask...
66 min
833
Shabana Mir, “Muslim American Women on Campus: ...
In the post 9/11 era in which Muslims in America have increasingly felt under the surveillance of the state, media, and the larger society, how have female Muslim students on US college campuses imagined, performed,
51 min
834
Ronen Shamir, “Current Flow: The Electrificatio...
Ronen Shamir‘s new book is a timely and thoughtful study of the electrification of Palestine in the early twentieth century. Current Flow: The Electrification of Palestine (Stanford University Press, 2013) makes use of Actor-Network Theory as a methodo...
70 min
835
John P. Turner, “Inquisition in Early Islam” (I...
Scholars of Islam and historians have frequently pointed to the Miḥna, translated as ‘trial’ or ‘test,’ as a crossroad in the landscape of Islamic history. Professor John P. Turner of Colby College is among those who challenge the long held assumptio...
75 min
836
Brian A. Catlos, “Muslims of Medieval Latin Chr...
In the current political climate it might be easy to assume that Muslims in the ‘West’ have always been viewed in a negative light. However, when we examine the historical relationship between Muslims and their non-Muslim neighbors we find a much more ...
60 min
837
Rachel Rinaldo, “Mobilizing Piety: Islam and Fe...
Are Islam and feminism inherently at odds? Is there a contradiction between piety and gender justice? This is the guiding theme for Rachel Rinaldo, professor of Sociology at the University of Virginia, in her book Mobilizing Piety: Islam and Feminism i...
61 min
838
J. Matthias Determann, “Historiography in Saudi...
Saudi Arabia is, for most Westerners, a mysterious place. It’s home to one of the most conservative forms of Islam around and ruled by one of the least democratic regimes in the world. Yet it’s a great friend of the liberal, democratic Western powers,
56 min
839
Hugh Talat Halman, “Where The Two Seas Meet” (F...
In Where The Two Seas Meet (Fons Vitae, 2013), Hugh Talat Halman unpacks one of the most provocative narratives in the Islamic tradition. In the 18th chapter of the Qur’an, Surat al-Kahf (The Cave), a mysterious figure named Khidr (the “Green Man”),
72 min
840
Najam Haider, “The Origins of the Shia: Identit...
When did groups in Kufa begin forming unique identities leading to the development of Shiism? Najam Haider, professor of Religion at Barnard College of Columbia University, answers this question in his book, The Origins of Shia: Identity, Ritual,
41 min
841
Marwa Elshakry, “Reading Darwin in Arabic, 1860...
The work of Charles Darwin, together with the writing of associated scholars of society and its organs and organisms, had a particularly global reach in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Marwa Elshakry‘s new book offers a fascinating w...
58 min
842
Sean Anthony, “Crucifixion and Death as Spectac...
Crucifixion is one of the most widely envisioned symbols in history. So much so, that for a contemporary reader the notion almost immediately plants an image of Jesus on the cross. Sean Anthony, Assistant Professor of History at the University of Orego...
62 min
843
Sa’diyya Shaikh, “Sufi Narratives of Intimacy: ...
Many Muslim debates regarding women are solely situated in legal or political frameworks. For example, we often find this tendency in conversations about women’s leadership in the mosque or the politics of veiling. Sa’diyya Shaikh,
53 min
844
Zareena Grewal, “Islam is a Foreign Country: Am...
Zareena Grewal‘s monograph Islam is a Foreign Country: American Muslims and the Global Crisis of Authority (NYU Press, 2013), seamlessly interweaves ethnographic research with an in-depth historical perspective in order to yield an unparalleled account...
67 min
845
Nathan Schneider. “God in Proof: The Story of a...
Nathan Schneider‘s monograph, God in Proof: The Story of a Search from the Ancients to the Internet (University of California Press, 2013), explores the timeless challenge of how to explain God. Are such explanations rational?
57 min
846
Ayesha Chaudhry, “Domestic Violence and the Isl...
How do people make sense of their scriptures when they do not align with the way they envision these texts? This problem is faced by many contemporary believers and is especially challenging in relation to passages that go against one’s vision of a gen...
45 min
847
Joshua Dubler, “Down in the Chapel: Religious L...
In almost every prison movie you see, there is a group of fanatically religious inmates. They are almost always led by a charismatic leader, an outsized father-figure who is loved by his acolytes and feared by nearly everyone else.
66 min
848
Ellen J. Amster, “Medicine and the Saints” (Uni...
What is the interplay between the physical human body and the body politic? This question is at the heart of Ellen J. Amster‘s Medicine and the Saints: Science, Islam, and the Colonial Encounter in Morocco, 1877-1956 (University of Texas Press, 2013).
76 min
849
Karen Pechilis, “South Asian Religions: Traditi...
If you’re going to teach a broadly themed survey course, you’ll probably need to assign some readings. One option is to assemble one of those photocopied course readers, full of excerpts taken from different sources. However,
66 min
850
Ahmad Atif Ahmad, “The Fatigue of the SharÄ«’a”...
In the book, The Fatigue of the SharÄ«’a (Palgrave, 2012), Ahmad Atif Ahmad explores a centuries-old debate about the permanence, or impermanence, of God’s law, and guidance, in the lives of Muslims. Could God’s guidance simply cease to be accessible a...
60 min