New Books in Islamic Studies

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 quintessential symbol of the alleged Muslim oppression of women, the veil has for some time represented a subject of tremendous rage, debate, polemics, and fantastical stereotypes. But what is the veil? What is its history? Is the veil primarily an Islamic concept and object? What are some of the problems associated with reducing the veil to religion? What is the genealogy of sensationalized representations of the veil in popular discourse and media? These are among the questions addressed by Sahar Amer, Professor of Arabic and Islamic Studies at the University of Sydney, in her brilliant new book: What is Veiling? Published by the University of North Carolina Press in 2014. Remarkably nuanced and thoughtful, this timely book takes readers on a riveting intellectual journey that brings into focus the complexities of the veil as a discursive, political, and material object. Amer moves seamlessly between multiple texts and contexts, while showing the diversity of ways in which Muslims and non-Muslims have approached, contested, embraced, or resisted the veil in different historical conjunctures. Just as there is no one “Islamic” position on the veil, there is no one or predetermined meaning that the veil or veiling carries, Amer argues. Puncturing essentialist and stereotypical narratives about the veil, Amer convincingly argues that while seemingly a purely sartorial object, the discourse on the veil is in fact invested in and embroidered by a multiplicity of normative commitments, hopes, fears, and anxieties, irreducible to any singular history, text, religion, or motivation. Beautifully written and exhaustively researched, this book is a must read for novices and experts alike; a helpful summary of the argument after each chapter should prove particularly useful in the undergraduate classroom. In our conversation, we talked about the history of the veil, discussions on the veil in major normative Muslim textual traditions, progressive Muslim reinterpretations of the veil in Islam, the veil and orientalism, competing imaginaries of the veil in Europe and the US today, Islamic fashion, and resistance to conservative understandings of the veil in contemporary art and poetry. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/islamic-studies

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 network’s growth and ongoing importance among Pakistani militant organizations. Beginning with an expansive history of the Haqqani family’s background, and subsequent emergence as a critical lynchpin in the Pakistani – and by extension US – anti-Soviet efforts in Afghanistan, the book goes on to cover the Haqqanis’ present operations, including its involvement in attacks on NATO, Indian, and government forces in Afghanistan. By shedding light on a group that, while sometimes mentioned in news media, is largely unknown to non-specialists, Fountainhead of Jihad is a major scholarly contribution to the subject of South Asian extremism. The book is in large part based on fascinating primary source material, much of it gleaned from seized documents contained in the US military’s HARMONY database, and media produced by the Haqqanis and other militant actors. Those interested in Pakistani intelligence’s relationship to extremism, the past and future of militancy in South Asia, and  terrorist modus operandi more generally, will all benefit from a close reading of Fountainhead of Jihad. After reading the book, I also believe that some familiarity with the Haqqani network is a prerequisite to understand the emergence and continued existence of Al-Qaeda and its affiliates. While insurgency rages on in Syria and Iraq, and attention on South Asian terrorism has waned somewhat, I have little doubt that the Haqqanis will continue to be a key actor in the “Great Game” between Afghanistan, Pakistan and India long after the demise of ISIL, Jabhat al-Nusrah, and other more recent additions to the Sunni militant scene. Among both scholars and practitioners, the counter-terrorism community would be well advised to have a thorough understanding of the Haqqanis, and I suspect there is no better source to acquire this understanding from than Fountainhead of Jihad. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/islamic-studies

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 does Islam seem to play a larger role in contemporary politics than other religions? The answers that are provided for these questions, particularly in the media, range from the ludicrous to the islamophobic. Cook, on the other hand, embarks on a much more nuanced and learned attempt at answering the question. His book, Ancient Religions, Modern Politics: The Islamic Case in Comparative Perspective (Princeton University Press, 2014), rightly begins with the assumption that if there is something unique about Islam in this regard, the uniqueness of it can only be understood through comparative study of other religions and their engagement with politics. Cook looks at Hinduism and Christianity’s involvement in modern political life and places them alongside Islam, delving deeper into issues of political identity, warfare, and social values. What he finds is interesting, and goes to the heart of almost every debate taking place in a wide variety of fields like religious studies and the sociology of religion. Listen as we talk with him about his book, about contemporary global politics, ISIS and Al-Qaeda, as well as fascinating future projects. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/islamic-studies

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

Many people have described Muslims modernities as being fundamentally disrupted by individual and civilizational encounters with western society. Wether rejecting or accepting alternative modes of thinking Muslims have responded to these new challenges with increasing regularity for over 200 years. Misquoting Muhammad: The Challenge and Choices of Interpreting the Prophet’s Legacy (Oneworld Publications, 2014) focuses on one of the central tasks for Muslims in the contemporary period, namely the interpretation of scripture and tradition. Jonathan A. C. Brown, Associate Professor and Associate Director of the Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University, carefully maps out multiple Muslim interpretive strategies in order to reveal the links and legacies between the pre-modern and contemporary periods. After a detailed explanation of pre-modern schools of thought, attitudes towards scripture, and hermeneutical methods Brown tackles the fragile relationship between text, community, and reader in determining ‘Truth’ in changing circumstances. We see that very often the interpretive methods used to deal with contradictions or discerning boundaries of permissibility were the same but led to divergent answers. Brown interrogates these larger issues through numerous case studies and examples. In our conversation we only scratched the surface of this detailed book. We discussed changing norms by which scripture are judged, women led prayer, the noble lie, tradition betraying or redeeming scripture, Shah Wali Allah, the Arab Spring, Sheikh Muhammad al-Gahzali, authenticity and the use of dubious hadith, verse 4:34 and the role of courts, and the historical precedent  of saying “No” to scripture. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/islamic-studies

What gets to count as Islam? In the current political climate this question is being repeated in a variety of contexts. The tapestry of various Islamic identities is revealed in an investigation of gender. In The Crisis of Islamic Masculinities (Bloomsbury, 2014), Amanullah De Sondy, Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Miami, tackles the construction of Muslim manhood in several interpretive traditions. These forms of masculinity – both ideal & reviled – are taken across a wide spectrum of thought, from Islamist perspectives to those challenging patriarchy. Many of the discussions revolve around similar themes, most importantly family, marriage, sexuality, and veiling. Other constructions of masculinity challenge heteronormativity within Muslim identities. The Qur’an is central to many of the interpretations discussed in the book but De Sondy demonstrates that here too we are not presented with a singular and clear ideal of masculinity. Qur’anic descriptions of male prophets, including Adam, Joseph, Muhammad, and Jesus, each complicate a simple narrative of Muslim manhood. In our conversation we discuss hermeneutical strategies, feminists approaches to the Qur’an, notions of love and sexual boundaries, the Mughal poet Mirza Ghalib, gender fluidity, Sufism in South Asia, prophethood, and same-sex love. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/islamic-studies

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

Donald Holbrook‘sThe Al-Qaeda Doctrine: The Framing and Evolution of the Leadership’s Public Discourse (Bloomsbury, 2014)represents a significant scholarly contribution to the study of Al-Qaeda and Islamic terrorism more broadly. Through a remarkably exhaustive, longitudinal study of over 260 public statements from Ayman al-Zawahiri and Osama bin Laden, Dr. Holbrook exposes Al-Qaeda’s ideology, grievances, objectives, and inconsistencies. He brings a level of rigor to this subject which is frequently absent in “expert” studies on terrorism, having databased and coded Al-Qaeda communiques for a variety of topics and characteristics. The Al-Qaeda Doctrine will likely become the definitive scholarly monograph on the subject for many years to come. Holbrook’s work is indeed becoming more relevant every day, as ideological ruptures emerge in the jihadist community, most recently evidenced by the Al-Qaeda leadership’s furious response to the Islamic State’s newly declared caliphate. The book’s assessment of Al-Qaeda’s success – indeed its lack thereof – in propagating its message and inspiring a “vanguard” in the Muslim world is also notable; The Al-Qaeda Doctrine‘s sober analysis of this, and many other topics, is  a welcome refreshment from the sometimes sensationalist treatment which this topic is prone to. I highly recommend The Al-Qaeda Doctrine to students, scholars, and practitioners alike, all of whom will glean many valuable insights from Holbrook’s unique work. I look forward to further publications by Holbrook, as well as fresh additions to Bloomsbury’s New Directions in Terrorism Studies series. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/islamic-studies

The towering Indian Muslim poet and intellectual Muhammad Iqbal (d. 1938) is among the most contested figures in the intellectual and political history of modern Islam. Heralded by some as the father of Pakistan and by others as a champion of pan-Islam, Iqbal’s legacy is as keenly debated as it is celebrated and appropriated. In his fascinating new book The Political Philosophy of Muhammad Iqbal: Islam and Nationalism in Late Colonial India (Cambridge University Press, 2012), Iqbal Sevea, Assistant Professor of history at UNC-Chapel Hill, explores Iqbal’s political and religious thought in a remarkably nuanced and dazzling fashion. Bringing into question the tendency to approach Iqbal through the prism of constraining categories like nationalist, modernist, and pan-Islamic, Sevea convincingly shows that the dynamism of Iqbal’s thought lay precisely in how he traversed multiple intellectual and ideological registers. Iqbal’s view of the nation did not correspond to the modern notion of nationalism, Sevea argues. Through a carefully historicized and conceptually invigorating analysis of a range of Iqbal’s writings, Sevea brings into view the palimpsest of discursive reservoirs that animated Iqbal’s thought as an intellectual and as a poet. Sevea brilliantly examines and displays the complexity of Iqbal’s project of comprehensively reimagining Islam in the conditions of colonial modernity, one that contrapuntally engaged Western philosophical traditions and the canon of Muslim intellectual traditions. Carefully researched and wonderfully written, this book will be of much interest to scholars and students of Islam, South Asia, politics, and colonialism. In our conversation we talked about the problem of nationalist historiographies in the study of Iqbal and South Asian Islam, intra-Muslim debates on the interaction of religion and nationalism in colonial India, Iqbal’s agonistic relationship with modernism, his understanding of Islam and nationalism, and the political stakes of this book. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/islamic-studies

In Henry Stubbe and the Beginnings of Islam: The Originall and Progress of Mahometanism (Columbia University Press, 2014), Nabil Matar masterfully edits an important piece of scholarship from seventeenth-century England by scholar and physician, Henry Stubbe (1632-76). Matar also gives a substantial introduction to his annotated edition of Stubbe’s text by situating the author in his historical context. Unlike other early modern writers on Islam, Stubbe’s ostensible goals were not to cast Islam in a negative light. On the contrary, he sought to challenge popular conceptions that understood Islam in negative terms, and although there is no evidence that Stubbe entertained conversion, he admits many admirable characteristics of Islam, ranging from Muhammad’s character to the unity of God. The English polymath was well versed in theological debates of his time and therefore equipped all the more to write the Originall, given the benefit of his comparative framework, which in part explains why the first portion of his text devotes itself to the history of early Christianity. Strikingly, however, it seems that Stubbe never learned Arabic, even though he studied religion with a leading Arabist of his time, Edward Pococke. Indeed, one novelty of Stubbe’s work was precisely his re-evaluation of Latin translations (of primary texts) that were already in circulation. Stubbe’s contributions to scholarship also speak to the history of Orientalism–a word that did not yet exist at Stubbe’s time–or how scholars in the “West” more broadly have approached Islam. Stubbe’s Originall offers insights into present-day Western discourses that still struggle–at times with egregious incompetence–to make sense of Islam and Muslims. In this regard, Matar’s detailed scholarly account of Henry Stubbe and his carefully edited version of the Originall remains as timely as ever. Undoubtedly, this meticulously researched book will interest an array of scholars, including those from disciplines of English literature, History, and Religious Studies. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/islamic-studies