New Books in Islamic Studies

During the height of Muslim power in Mughal South Asia, Hindu and Muslim scholars worked collaboratively to translate a large body of Hindu Sanskrit texts into the Persian language. Translating Wisdom reconstructs the intellectual processes and exchanges that underlay these translations. Using as a case study the 1597 Persian rendition of the Yoga-Vasistha—an influential Sanskrit philosophical tale whose popularity stretched across the subcontinent—Shankar Nair illustrates how these early modern Muslim and Hindu scholars drew upon their respective religious, philosophical, and literary traditions to forge a common vocabulary through which to understand one another. These scholars thus achieved, Nair argues, a nuanced cultural exchange and interreligious and cross-philosophical dialogue significant not only to South Asia’s past but also its present.This interview is one of 3 interviews related to an upcoming American Academy of Religion "New Books in Hindu Studies" academic panel. The panel discusses Translating Wisdom: Hindu-Muslim Intellectual Interactions in Early Modern South Asia (University of California Press, 2020) in tandem with Patton Burchett's A Genealogy of Devotion. Patton's interview can be accessed here.Translating Wisdom is available open access here.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/islamic-studies

Early 20th century Southeast Asia was arguably home to the once of the most vibrant and diverse caldrons of revolutionary ferment in world history. Revolts against Western imperialism and traditional socio-economic structures developed into a range of utopian experiments. In Republicanism, Communism, Islam: Cosmopolitan Origins of Revolution in Southeast Asia (Cornell UP, 2021), John T. Sidel argues that in order to understand these revolutions we must denationalize, internationalize, and transnationalism our analysis. Multiple forms of cosmopolitanism produced the Filipino revolt against Spanish rule, the Indonesian struggle from independence from the Dutch, and the Vietnamese fight against the French empire and for a Marxist utopia. Sidel highlights Southeast Asia’s often surprising global connections.Professor Sidel received his BA and MA from Yale University and his PhD from Cornell University and was fortunate enough to have been mentored by both James C. Scott and Benedict Anderson. He is the author of Capital, Coercion, and Crime: Bossism in the Philippines (Stanford University Press, 1999), Riots, Pogroms, Jihad: Religious Violence in Indonesia (Cornell University Press, 2006), and The Islamist Threat in Southeast Asia: A Reassessment (East-West Center, 2007). He has also co-authored Philippine Politics and Society in the Twentieth Century: Colonial Legacies, Postcolonial Trajectories and Thinking and Working Politically in Development: Coalitions for Change in the Philippines. Dr. Sidel was previously at the School of Oriental and African Studies but since 2004 has held the Sir Patrick Gillam Chair in International and Comparative Politics in the Departments of Government and International Relations at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE).Michael G. Vann is a professor of world history at California State University, Sacramento. A specialist in imperialism and the Cold War in Southeast Asia, he is the author of The Great Hanoi Rat Hunt: Empires, Disease, and Modernity in French Colonial Vietnam (Oxford University Press, 2018). When he’s not reading or talking about new books with smart people, Mike can be found surfing in Santa Cruz, California. Follow Mike on Twitter: @MichaelGVann. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/islamic-studies

In Faith in Freedom: Muslim Immigrant Women’s Experiences of Domestic Violence (Melbourne University Press, 2019), Nafiseh Ghafournia explores questions of domestic violence in the context of Muslim immigrant women in Australia. Aiming to correct existing accounts of Muslim women’s lives and experiences particularly as immigrants, the study uses an intersectional framework to deepen our understanding of the ways that immigrant Muslim women understand, experience, and respond to domestic violence. Among the themes that the book covers are the relationships between culture, religion, gender, and immigration status in the context of domestic violence; why and when, if at all, might women leave abusive relationships; the various kinds of domestic violence that immigrant Muslim women experience, including physical, psychological, financial, spiritual, sexual, in-laws, and immigration-related violence; services available to victims and survivors of abuse; and essential information for service providers and policy makers.The book will appeal to anyone interested in immigrant experiences, domestic violence from an intersectional perspective, Muslim women; and because of its practical value, it should also be read by service providers, policymakers, ESL educators, and others who interact with immigrants on a regular basis.Shehnaz Haqqani is an Assistant Professor of Religion at Mercer University. She earned her PhD in Islamic Studies with a focus on gender from the University of Texas at Austin in 2018. Her dissertation research explored questions of change and tradition, specifically in the context of gender and sexuality, in Islam. She is currently working on a book project on Muslim women's marriage to non-Muslims in Islam. Shehnaz runs a YouTube channel called What the Patriarchy?!, where she vlogs about feminism and Islam in an effort to dismantle the patriarchy and uproot it from Islam (ambitious, she knows). She can be reached at haqqani_s@mercer.edu. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/islamic-studies

O Humankind Surah Ya-Sin (Fons Vitae, 2021) is compiled by Cemalnur Sargut, who is a Sufi teacher based in Turkey and has been translated into English by Victoria Rowe Holbrook. The compilation consists of a robust commentary of Surah Ya-Sin or the 36th chapter of the Qur’an and its 83 verses. The book is organized around these 83 verses, in which Sargut provides stunning in-depth commentaries on each verse by drawing from Sufi, Turkish and Islamic traditions. For instance, throughout her discussion, she draws on the teachings and literary traditions of Jalaluddin Rumi, Muhyiddin Ibn Arabi, Ahmed Rifai, Ken’an Rifai and many others. Themes that emerge throughout these commentaries include core Sufi theological, philosophical and metaphysical traditions, such as the teachings of Prophet Muhammad as the insan al-kamil, divine attributes of Allah and the Prophet Muhammad, and much more. This collection of commentaries will be of interest to those who think, write, and teach on the topics of Qur’anic Studies, Sufism (especially of Turkish Sufi traditions), and much more. Shobhana Xavier is an Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Queen’s University. More details about her research and scholarship may be found here and here. She may be reached at shobhana.xavier@queensu.ca. You can follow her on Twitter via @shobhanaxavier. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/islamic-studies

Ahmad Ibn Tulun: Governor of Abbasid Egypt, 868-884 (Oneworld Academic, 2021), by Matthew S. Gordon (Miami University (Ohio)) is an innovative look at the Abbasid governor of Egypt from 868-884, and the short-lived dynasty that succeeded him for just two decades. Ibn Tulun is perhaps best known for the mosque that still bears his name in Cairo--arguably the city's oldest Islamic monument that survives in its original form--which was the centerpiece of the capital city that he built. While ibn Tulun is often depicted in Egyptian historiography as an autonomous leader, aspiring toward independence away from the greater Abbasid state, Gordon makes a convincing argument that ibn Tulun--the son of a Turkic slave-soldier gifted to the Abbasid caliph--was instead a product of the political turmoil in Iraq, but that he was very much an Abbasid in spirit and politics. This intriguing and convincing reframing of ibn Tulun's life and career offers a new interpretation of this understudied period in Egyptian history, as well as a glimpse into Abbasid-era household politics. Christopher S Rose is a social historian of medicine focusing on Egypt and the Eastern Mediterranean in the 19th and 20th century. He currently teaches History at St. Edward's University in Austin, Texas. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/islamic-studies

In today's program, I speak with Richard E. Antaramian about his recent monograph, Brokers of Faith, Brokers of Empire: Armenians and the Politics of Reform in the Ottoman Empire (Stanford University Press, 2020). In Brokers of Faith, Brokers of Empire, Antaramian shows that the Armenian Church and clergy--spread across the empire in a vast ecclesiastical network--played an important role in the application of Ottoman reform programs during the mid-nineteenth century. His main intervention to the scholarship is to show that Armenians were not uniformly opposed to Ottoman centralization. Furthermore, Through his study of the Armenian Church, he challenges the well-known paradigm of "center and periphery" by offering a networked model of empire. For experts and novices alike, this book will not only offer a compelling new perspective into Ottoman and Armenian history, but also surprise you with new insights on Kurdish-Armenian relations in Eastern Anatolia in the 19th century.Deren Ertas is a PhD student in the joint program in History and Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard University. You can reach her on Twitter @drnrts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/islamic-studies

In an era of rampant Islamophobia, literary representations of Muslims and anti Muslim bigotry tell us a lot about changing concepts of cultural difference. In Islamophobia and the Novel (Columbia University Press, 2018), Peter Morey, Professor at the University of Birmingham, analyzes how recent works of fiction have framed and responded to the rise of anti-Muslim prejudice, showing how their portrayals of Muslims both reflect and refute the ideological preoccupations of media and politicians in the post-9/11 West. Morey discusses novels embodying a range of positions—from the avowedly secular to the religious, and from texts that appear to underwrite Western assumptions of cultural superiority to those that recognize and critique neoimperial impulses. Contemporary literature’s capacity to unveil the conflicted nature of anti-Muslim bigotry expands our range of resources to combat Islamophobia. This, in turn, might contribute to Islamophobia’s eventual dismantling. In our conversation we discussed anti-Muslim prejudice, the tension between narrative and power, literature and its relationship to Islamophobia, the “market for the Muslim,” stereotyping, authenticity and the burden of representation, aesthetic expectations, economic constraints, multiculturalism, securitization, effects of 9/11, the global novel, and Critical Muslim Literary Studies.Kristian Petersen is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy & Religious Studies at Old Dominion University. You can find out more about his work on his website, follow him on Twitter @BabaKristian, or email him at kpeterse@odu.edu. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/islamic-studies

Todd H. Weir and Hugh McLeod, two leading historians of religion, have teamed up to edit a volume in the Proceedings of the British Academy that explores how conflicts between secular worldviews and religions shaped the history of the 20th century. With contributions considering case studies relating to Judaism, Christianity, Islam, atheism and communism, and from several continents, Defending the Faith: Global Histories of Apologetics and Politics in the Twentieth Century (Oxford UP, 2020) offers to re-shape the conceptual tools by which the history of religious politics and politicised religion will be shaped. What happens to the history of the "short 20th century" when the concept of apologetics is put at its centre? We discover that politics and religion are categories that overlap, and that actors in disputes between religions, and in disputes between religions and political entities, are constantly learning from each other.Crawford Gribben is a professor of history at Queen’s University Belfast. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/islamic-studies

In his majestic and magisterial new book Law, Empire, and the Sultan: Ottoman Imperial Authority and Late Hanafi Jurisprudence (Oxford UP, 2020), Samy Ayoub examines and demonstrates the entanglement of Islamic law and imperial political authority in the early modern period. Focused on the incorporation of Ottoman imperial authority and edicts in the late Hanafi jurisprudential tradition, this brilliant book interrupts and questions widely held assumptions about the separation between the domains of imperial politics and the Islamic legal tradition in the premodern period. The strength of this book lies in the way it provides a meticulous and dazzling intellectual history of the Hanafi legal tradition showing its internal dynamism and nuanced forms of reasoning while constantly connecting that intellectual history to broader theoretical questions about the interaction of law, juridical authority, and empire. Combining philological rigor with razor sharp conceptual dexterity, this book fundamentally reorients our understanding of the relationship between law and politics in Islamic thought and history. This lucidly written book, populated by a series of helpful tables and charts, will also be a delight to teach in advanced undergraduate and graduate seminars on a range of topics.SherAli Tareen is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Franklin and Marshall College. His research focuses on Muslim intellectual traditions and debates in early modern and modern South Asia. His book Defending Muhammad in Modernity (University of Notre Dame Press, 2020) received the American Institute of Pakistan Studies 2020 Book Prize. His other academic publications are available here. He can be reached at sherali.tareen@fandm.edu. Listener feedback is most welcome. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/islamic-studies

Eric Schluessel’s Land of Strangers: The Civilizing Project in Qing Central Asia (Columbia UP, 2020) looks at what happened when, at the end of the Qing, Chinese Confucian revivalists gained control of the Muslim-majority region of Xinjiang and sought to transform it. Yet this is not a book about high politics or discourse — far from it. This is a book about what this civilizing project looked like on the ground, how it played out in “everyday politics,” and how Turkic-speaking Muslims felt about and responded to attempts to transform them into Chinese-speaking Confucians. Centering on the voices and experiences of ordinary people in the oasis of Turpan, Land of Strangers is filled with stories of prostitution, human trafficking, venereal disease, families divided by war, and so much more. Reading across the Turpan archive this book combines records in both Chinese and Chaghatay, laying bare the difficulties revivalists encountered in educating children and showing how interpreters went about 'translating' oral Chaghatay, and throughout it emphasizes how the negotiation of place, difference, and identity was continual and fraught.This beautifully written and meticulously researched book is a must read for anyone interested in Chinese history, the history of Central Asia, colonialism, and empire, as well as any historians who might get a particular thrill in seeing the “ragged” sources Eric is dealing with so expertly pieced together.Sarah Bramao-Ramos is a PhD candidate in History and East Asian Languages at Harvard. She works on Manchu language books and is interested in anything with a kesike. She can be reached at sbramaoramos@g.harvard.edu Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/islamic-studies