Islam is a religion of violence and behind every Muslim there lurks a potential terrorist. Islam is a threat to values of the Christian West. They are like oil and water. Clearly, they don't mix. One God and Two Religions: Christians and Muslims as Neighbors (Fortress Press, 2025) confronts these popular perceptions head-on. With keen insight and gentle understanding, Amir Hussain explores the differences between Christianity and Islam, as well as the many things these two enduring faith traditions hold in common - including, first and foremost, their belief in and desire to be faithful to the one, true God; their shared roots and scripture (from the Jewish faith); and the spiritual values of peace and social justice. In all of this, the book invites the reader to a place of reconciliation, to a place where the truth and value of each of these great faith traditions can be recognized and honored by the other. In the end, the metaphor of oil and water is an interesting one for the reality of conflict and the hope for reconciliation between Islam and Christianity today. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/islamic-studies

After Revelation: The Rabbinic Past in the Medieval Islamic World offers a dynamic new perspective on medieval Jewish legal thought and its integration in the wider Islamic world. Here, Marc D. Herman demonstrates that Jews were fully conversant in their contemporaries' ideas about revelation, law, and legal interpretation. Bookended by the two luminaries of medieval Judaism--Saadia Gaon and Moses Maimonides--After Revelation analyzes the legal theory that medieval Jews produced in Islamic lands, mostly in Arabic, and reveals previously unrecognized commonalities between Jewish and Islamic constructions of religious law. Herman tackles one of the central doctrines of post-biblical Judaism: that God had supplemented the written Hebrew Bible with an Oral Torah. Tracing this idea from Baghdad to Córdoba to Cairo, he shows that the Oral Torah took many new forms in the medieval Islamic world. After Revelation makes plain that medieval Judaism took the shapes that it did largely because of contact with Islam. You can pre-order this book now, and it will be published on August 5, 2025 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/islamic-studies

In 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 violence, domination, and shock. The choice is an understandable one. But in his new monograph, A Slave between Empires: A Transimperial History of North Africa (Columbia University Press, 2020), M’hamed Oualdi asks how a history of the modern Maghreb might look if we did not perceive it solely through the prism of European colonization, and argues that widening our gaze might force us to redefine our understanding of colonialism — and its limits. As a sequel of sorts to his first book, Oualdi explores the life and afterlife of one figure, the manumitted slave and Tunisian dignitary Husayn Ibn ‘Abdallah, as an aperture through which to understand the financial, intellectual, and kinship networks that mingled with processes of colonialism and Ottoman governance in unexpected ways to produce the modern Maghreb. A master class in how historians might untangle the relationship between the personal and the political, A Slave between Empires centers Husayn — and North Africa — at the crossroads of competing ambitions, imperial and intimate. Engaging with sources in Arabic, Ottoman Turkish, and European languages, and corralling French, Tunisian, and Anglophone historiographies into one conversation, Oualdi’s newest book is not to be missed. M'hamed Oualdi is full professor at Sciences Po in Paris. Nancy Ko is a Paul & Daisy Soros Fellow and a PhD student in History at Columbia University, where she examines the relationship between Jewish difference and (concepts of) philanthropy and property in the late- and post-Ottoman and Qajar Middle East. She can be reached at [nancy.ko@columbia.edu]. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/islamic-studies

In December 2024, the long and bloody stalemate in Syria broke down. In a transformation breathtaking for its suddenness and speed, President Bashar al-Assad, the beating heart of Arab authoritarianism, fled to Russia, his dungeons emptying as rebels overcame the Syrian army with scarcely a fight. Euphoria at the collapse of a government people never voted for was tempered by fear for the future. The victorious insurgents were supported by outside powers and had a track record of brutality comparable to Assad’s in addition to religious fanaticism. Syrians—whose fragile, cosmopolitan mosaic has been repeatedly shattered by foreign-backed sectarians—faced rule by an avowedly Islamist regime that pledged to break with its past and show tolerance to all religious communities. In Syria: Civil War to Holy War? (OR Books, 2024), Charles Glass shows how Assad’s misrule, Sunni fundamentalism, and Western deceit combined to create and prolong the Syrian disaster, which since 2011 has claimed more than two hundred thousand lives and driven more than eight million people from their homes. Glass has reported extensively from the Middle East and travelled frequently in Syria for more than fifty years. Here he melds reportage, analysis, and history to provide an accessible overview of the origins and permutations defining the conflict, situating it clearly in the broader crises of the region. In this new and thoroughly revised edition of his earlier Syria Burning, Glass brings the story to the present, showing how we got here and what a post-Assad settlement might bring. About the Author: Charles Glass was ABC News Chief Middle East Correspondent from 1983 to 1993. Since 1973, he has covered wars in the Middle East, Africa and the Balkans. He is the author of Syria Burning, Tribes with Flags, The Tribes Triumphant, Money for Old Rope, The Northern Front, Americans in Paris, The Deserters, They Fought Alone and Soldiers Don't Go Mad: A Story of Brotherhood, Poetry, and Mental Illness During the First World War. His website is www.charlesglass.net. About the Host: Stuti Roy is a recent graduate with an MPhil in Modern South Asian Studies from the University of Oxford, and a BA in Political Science from the University of Toronto. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/islamic-studies

A History of the Muslim World: From Its Origins to the Dawn of Modernity (Princeton UP, 2024) by Michael A. Cook This book describes and explains the major events, personalities, conflicts, and convergences that have shaped the history of the Muslim world. The body of the book takes readers from the origins of Islam to the eve of the nineteenth century, and an epilogue continues the story to the present day. Michael Cook thus provides a broad history of a civilization remarkable for both its unity and diversity.After setting the scene in the Middle East of late antiquity, the book depicts the rise of Islam as one of the great black swan events of history. It continues with the spectacular rise of the Caliphate, an empire that by the time it broke up had nurtured the formation of a new civilization. It then goes on to cover the diverse histories of all the major regions of the Muslim world, providing a wide-ranging account of the key military, political, and cultural developments that accompanied the eastward and westward spread of Islam from the Middle East to the shores of the Atlantic and the Pacific.At the same time, A History of the Muslim World contains numerous primary-source quotations that expose the reader to a variety of acutely insightful voices from the Muslim past. Michael Cook is the Class of 1943 University Professor of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University. His books include Ancient Religions, Modern Politics: The Islamic Case in Comparative Perspective (Princeton), A Brief History of the Human Race, and The Koran: A Very Short Introduction. Morteza Hajizadeh is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th and 19th Century British Literature. YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/a48266/videos Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/islamic-studies

Love in Sufi Literature: Ibn ‘Ajiba’s Understanding of the Divine Word (Routledge, 2023) explores the role of divine love in the Quranic commentary of the Moroccan Sufi scholar Aḥmad Ibn ʿAjība (d. 1224/1809). Through close textual analysis of Ibn ʿAjība’s exegesis al-Baḥr al-madīd—The Abundant Ocean—and drawing on his other Sufi writings the book illuminates the scholar’s theory of divine love, drawn from his scholarly antecedents, to elucidate its role and the scholar’s impact on the wider field of Quranic scholarship. This close analysis is supplemented by a comparative approach focusing on several other eminent and influential Sufi commentaries. What is displayed is that Ibn ʿAjība’s exegesis connected theoretical works on the concept of divine love to their practical application, a breakthrough in Sufi literature. The study situates Ibn ‘Ajība’s thought in theological and historical perspective, engaging with his mystical approach which integrates his theory of divine love with other Sufi doctrines in an accessible manner. As such, the Moroccan scholar’s work left an indelible impact on future generations of Quranic exegetes within North Africa and across the Islamic world. Love in Sufi Literature makes important contributions to the study of Sufism, Islam in North Africa, and late pre-modern Islamic intellectual history. Omneya Ayad is Assistant Professor of Sufi Studies at Üsküdar University in Istanbul, Türkiye. Yaseen Christian Andrewsen is a DPhil Candidate at the University of Oxford specialising in Islamic intellectual history in West Africa, focused on issues in Sufism, theology, and authority. Yaseen is a co-host for the New Books in Islamic Studies podcast. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/islamic-studies

The Collective Dream: Egyptians Longing For A Better Life (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023) links two seminal moments in Egypt’s history – the Revolution of 25th January 2011 and the presidency of Gamal Abdel Nasser – through various cultural manifestations. It conceives the concept of “collective dreaming” to map out the subliminal feeling that runs deep through experiences of socially transformative moments. Sarah Nagaty has extensively studied the structure of feelings that encompasses the experiences not only of activist minorities but the broader mass of revolutionary movements. In certain historical moments, hopes and aspirations bind together millions of people from all walks of life: students, workers, farmers, and middle-class professionals. Nagaty calls this phenomenon the “collective dream”, something which has been carried through generations of Egyptians. In this episode, Ibrahim Fawzy sat down with Sarah Nagaty to discuss the conceptual roots of the collective dream and the overlooked histories of Nubian displacement during the construction of the High Dam. They also explored how thinkers like Raymond Williams and Lauren Berlant shaped Nagaty’s method of reading revolutionary time and cultural memory, as well as how vernacular poetry, reportage, and graffiti served as vital archival traces of collective feeling. Ibrahim Fawzy is a literary translator and writer based in Boston. His interests include translation studies, Arabic literature, ecocriticism, disability studies, and migration literature. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/islamic-studies

Simon Stjernholm's new book Sensing Islam: Engaging and Contesting the Senses in Muslim Religiosity (Bloomsbury Press, 2025) considers specific case studies of embodiment and oratory productions by Muslims in Denmark, Sweden, and Cyprus. In the chapter on approaching God, we learn how rituals such as du‘a (intercessory prayers) or dhikr (remembrance of God) informs sensorial experiences of the divine, particularly intimate ones, while the discussion on meditating on Muhammad considers the bodily aspects of Prophet Muhammad, such as his saliva, urine, and sweat that influence mawlid literatures and ritual performance of them within Sufi communities like the Naqshbandi-Haqqanis. Though rituals emerging from embodied understandings of holy figures are not without some tension, as we learn throughout the book but especially during the discussion on graves. Here the interred bodies of Sufi saints are caught up in debates around the permissibility of shrine visitation, a topic that comes up amongst lectures given by Swedish Muslim leaders. Overall, then, through analysis of Danish and Swedish podcast materials, ritual practices, such as devotion to the Prophet Muhammad and Sufi saints, we understand more about the sonic and pious dimensions of Islam and the Muslim authorial voices and listening that shapes them. This book will be of interest to those who work on sound studies, material culture, Sufism and Islam in Europe. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/islamic-studies

In this episode of Unlocking Academia, host Raja Aderdor speaks with Dr. Basma A. S. Dajani, Professor of Arabic Language and Literature, in a sweeping conversation on Arab-Andalusian love poetry and the cultural, linguistic, and emotional legacies it continues to inspire. Rooted in her 1994 book The Arab Andalusian Love Poetry: A Study of the Interaction Between Place and Man Through Time (AU Cairo Press, 1994), Dr. Dajani traces the origins of her research back to a formative journey to Granada in the early 1990s, where she was deeply influenced by the stories of Alhambra, her father the historian Ahmad Sidqi Dajani, and conversations with philosopher Roger Garaudy and Salma Taji. Drawing on decades of scholarship, she discusses her study of classical Arabic manuscripts, including Massare’ alUshaaq by Ja’far alSarraj, and reflects on the intersections of poetry, gender, geography, and intercultural dialogue. Together, they explore the themes of longing, nostalgia, and nature in the poetry of Al-Andalus; the contributions of women poets like Wallada bint al-Mustakfi; the influence of the Andalusian landscape on literary expression; and the enduring resonance of courtship poetry across time and cultures. Dr. Dajani also discusses the pedagogical value of teaching Andalusian texts today, the urgency of preserving classical Arabic manuscripts, and her vision for future research to spotlight overlooked voices in the tradition. Lyrical, insightful, and deeply rooted in lived and literary history, this episode offers a rare blend of academic depth and poetic beauty. We are Clavis Aurea: a dynamic team constantly looking for ways to help academic publishing grow and to promote groundbreaking publications to scholars, students, and enthusiasts globally. Based in the renowned publishing city of Leiden, we eat, sleep, and breathe publishing! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/islamic-studies

The Birthplace of Jesus Is in Palestine: A Memoir (Wipf and Stock, 2024) is a narrative of a Christian family in Bethlehem in the West Bank. Based on diary entries and interviews from 2000 to 2023, the Dutch author--an anthropologist and peace activist--chronicles the spontaneous reactions of his Palestinian children and wife navigating the challenges posed by curfews and checkpoints. Problems of Palestinian school life are shown from the perspective of teachers and students. Against the background of Israeli occupation and settlement building, the intricacies of Palestinian culture in its daily rhythms and domestic spaces come to life. Throughout the pages, the key Palestinian concept of sumud, or steadfastness, is explored. The memoir details acts of creative nonviolent resistance, individual protests, affirmations of cultural identity, and inspiring examples of Muslim-Christian community. The book also reveals unexpected connections between Palestinian culture in the Bethlehem area and broader Christian values and traditions. An afterword reflects upon implications of Israel's war in Gaza. Roberto Mazza is currently a visiting scholar at the Buffett Institute for Global Affairs at Northwestern University. He is the host of the Jerusalem Unplugged Podcast and to discuss and propose a book for interview can be reached at robbymazza@gmail.com. Blusky and IG: @robbyref Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/islamic-studies

Secularism and Islam in Bangladesh: 50 Years After Independence (Routledge, 2025) comprehensively analyses the syncretistic form of Bengali Islam and its relationship with secularism in Bangladesh from pre-British to contemporary times. It focuses on the importance of understanding the dynamics between religion and secularism within specific cultural contexts. Arguing that extremist interpretations of Islam, which aim to establish a theocratic state, have not been able to influence the pluralistic religious and cultural life of Bangladesh substantially, the book shows that religious and cultural pluralism will continue to thrive despite the apparent threat posed by increasing religiosity among Bangladeshi Muslims. This book is a timely and significant contribution to the discourse on secularism and Islam, with relevance beyond Bangladesh and the wider Islamic world. It will appeal to scholars and researchers working in the fields of South Asian Studies, Asian Religions, and the Sociology of Religion. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/islamic-studies

A powerful new history detailing the most significant military clashes between Islam and Christendom over the 1,300 years of the Muslim caliphate.  From the taking of the holy city of Jerusalem in the 7th century AD by Caliph Umar, to the collapse of the Ottoman Empire following the end of World War I, Christian popes, emperors and kings, and Muslim caliphs and sultans were locked in a 1300-year battle for political, military, ideological, economic and religious supremacy. In this powerful new history of the era, acknowledged expert on the history of the Middle East and the Crusades Simon Mayall focuses on some of the most significant clashes of arms in human history: the taking and retaking of Jerusalem and the collapse of the Crusader states; the fall of Constantinople; the sieges of Rhodes and Malta; the assault on Vienna and the 'high-water mark' of Ottoman advance into Europe; culminating in the Allied capture of Jerusalem in World War I, the final collapse of the Ottoman Empire, the dissolution of the sultanate and the caliphate, and the formation of modern Europe and the modern Middle East.  The House of War: The Struggle Between Christendom and the Caliphate (Bloomsbury, 2024) offers a wide, sweeping narrative, encompassing the broad historical and religious context of this period, while focussing on some of the key, pivotal sieges and battles, and on the protagonists, political and military, who determined their conclusions and their consequences. Simon Mayall is a former soldier in the British Army, and an acknowledged expert on the history of the Middle East, and of the Crusades. Much of his 40-year professional career was focussed on the Middle East, and he has strong family and academic interests in the region. His last appointments were as the British Government's Defence Senior Adviser for the Middle East, and the Prime Minister's Security Envoy to Iraq and the Kurdish Region. Caleb Zakarin is editor at the New Books Network. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/islamic-studies

Emilie Diouf of Brandeis English, whose monograph on genocide and trauma is forthcoming, joins John to speak with the celebrated French journalist and activist Rokahya Diallo. Diouf places Diallo within a transnational black intellectual tradition, founded in the interwar period in the Negritude movement; it was then that Paulette, Jeanne, and Anne Nardal’s literary salon became a meeting ground for African, Antillean, and African-American intellectuals, in the Parisian suburb of Clamart. The three discuss the slowly changing racial climate in France and globally; how to counter ethnonationalism; as well as the currents of dissent or disdain that threaten to disrupt even leftwing political solidarity. Mentioned in the Episode Diallo has directed 8 documentaries among which her 2013 award winning film, Les Marches de la Liberté (Steps to Freedom) . She is also the author of many books, including most recently, La France tu l’aimes ou tu la fermes or France, Love it or Shut it, a collection of her major articles on the “struggle against oppression in France and globally.” Ne reste pas à ta place, or Don’t try to fit in, (2016) and forthcoming book Le dictionnaire amoureux du féminisme or A Feminist Lover’s Dictionary (Editions Plon, March 2025) Les Indivisibles: humor watchdog organization. Parody ceremony Y’a Bon Awards given to the “most racist sentences” every year. Rokahya Diallo Coordination des Femmes Noir Awa Thiam, La Parole aux Négresses Afrofeminism 2005 Clichy-sous-bois, a Paris banlieue, was the site of major unrest. Zyed Benna, 17, of Tunisian descent, and Bouna Traoré, 15, of Mauritanian descent, died tragically in a substation while trying to avoid detention. The leading French TV station, TF1, made waves (and history) by hiring Harry Roselmack in 2016 Diallo’s own strong X/Twitter presence allows her to talk about being harassed—on Twitter/X itself!--and she has a podcast with Grace Ly, Kiffe Ta Race Diallo’s film Les Marches de la Liberté 2013 From Paris to Ferguson ( De Paris à Ferguson : coupables d'être noirs) 2016 African Americans in Paris: James Baldwin and Josephine Baker in the 1930s, but also Angela Davis in the 1960s being perceived as an Algerian Faiza Guene Just Like Tomorrow (Kif kif demain) Read and Listen to the episode here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/islamic-studies

What does Islam, particularly Shīʿī Islam, really say about same-sex sexual relations? Can Islamic legal frameworks, rooted in centuries of jurisprudence, ever be used to imagine the possibility of an Islamically valid same-sex marriage? What terms and categories did pre-modern Islamic sources use to describe what we might now call “homosexuality,” and what is meant by the claim that “homosexuality,” as a form of identity, is a modern concept? Is the story of Lot in the Qur’an really about homosexuality? And crucially, what Islamic perspectives exist in response to the deeply homophobic statement “Navigating Differences: Clarifying Sexual and Gender Ethics in Islam,” published in May 2023 and endorsed by those who argue that Islam categorically rejects same-sex sexual relationships? In Negotiating Homosexuality in Islam: A Legal-hermeneutical Examination of Modern Shīʿī Discourse (Brill, 2024), Mehrdad Alipour engages these urgent questions with intellectual rigor and legal precision. Alipour is a scholar of Iranian and Islamic studies whose work focuses on Islamic legal theory, Shi‘i thought, and the evolving discourse around sex, gender, and sexuality in both premodern and modern contexts. He earned his PhD in Arabic and Islamic Studies from the University of Exeter and received traditional training at the Seminary of Qom in Iran. He is currently based at the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands, where he leads the project Beyond Binaries: Intersex in Islamic Legal Tradition, exploring how intersex identities have been understood in Shi‘i legal texts from the 14th to early 20th centuries. Another publication of his, “Navigating Body Politics in Shiʿi Legal Tradition: Examining Sayyid Kāẓim al-Yazdī’s Account of Non-Binary Intersex,” is available online for free to all readers. Rather than offering a theological verdict or issuing new rulings in the book, Alipour turns to the internal tools of the Imāmī Shīʿī legal tradition—most notably, the method of ijtihād—to explore how scholars have historically interpreted and might yet reinterpret questions regarding sexual relations. Through a careful and brilliant analysis of Qur’anic verses, hadith traditions, legal principles, and rational argument, Alipour shows how the Shīʿī legal tradition contains interpretive possibilities that could speak to contemporary understandings of homosexuality as a consensual, identity-based, and egalitarian practice. As Alipour clarifies in our conversation, his study does not attempt to declare what Islamic law must say about same-sex relations, but rather to identify and expand the discursive spaces within which such a conversation can meaningfully take place. By using the very legal principles and interpretive strategies that have shaped Shīʿī jurisprudence across generations, he invites scholars and jurists to consider how Islamic legal thought might respond, faithfully and creatively, to modern realities. The book is a thoughtful and necessary contribution to ongoing debates on Islam, law, and sexual diversity. In our conversation today, Alipour walks us through the book’s key arguments and findings, highlights the significance of applying modern Imāmī ijtihādic principles to the question of same-sex relations, and outlines how core Islamic sources—the Qur’an, sunnah, reason (ʿaql), and consensus (ijmāʿ)—have been interpreted in relation to same-sex intimacy, with special attention to specific gaps in the story of Lot in the Qur’an. He also clarifies key premodern terms that are often cited by contemporary Muslim scholars as referring to homosexuality, unpacking their historical meanings and legal contexts. This here is my conversation with Mehrdad Alipour on his book, Negotiating Homosexuality in Islam: A Legal-hermeneutical Examination of Modern Shīʿī Discourse (Brill, 2024). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/islamic-studies

Quran Commentary and the Biblical Turn (de Gruyter, 2024) examines the exegetical relationship between the Quran and the Bible in Islamic intellectual history. As the two have been called "intertwined scriptures" due to the Quran’s frequent invocation of biblical narratives and figures, a question is raised: what is the history of Muslims’ exegetical engagement with the biblical text? Through a survey of 179 Quran commentaries, the book establishes itself with foundations in the longitudinal history of the Bible in Quranic exegesis. From that point, the book offers detailed case studies and historical contextualisation of the history of the use of the Biblical text in Quranic commentaries, which culminated in a “Biblical turn” in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. This Biblical Turn, which had global influences and impacts, did not only generate new Muslim views of the Bible but even new interpretations of the Quran itself. Quran Commentary and the Biblical Turn makes interventions in several fields, including Quranic Studies and Biblical reception studies, as well as sub-fields of Islamic Studies focusing on tafsir and Islam in modernity. The book was awarded the BRAIS–De Gruyter Prize in the Study of Islam and the Muslim World. Samuel Ross is an Associate Professor at Texas Christian University in Dallas, Texas, USA. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/islamic-studies

In this episode the Radio ReOrient hosts – Hizer Mir, Claudia Radiven, Saeed Khan and Chella Ward – reflect back on this season on ReOrienting History. They ask why history plays such a large role in post-orientalist approaches, and think about the role that history plays in the world around us. That’s all from us this season, but join us again for another season of Radio ReOrient, where we will be exploring Islamosphere and navigating the post-Western. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/islamic-studies

In this episode, Hizer Mir and Chella Ward talked to Ðermana Kuric about Bosnia and Muslimness, focussing on the ways the history of Muslimness in Bosnia interacts with current identities and practices. Ðermana is a researcher whose work concerns hate crime and discrimination in relation to Muslims in Europe. This episode is one of our ‘Forgotten Ummah’ episodes where we consider Muslimness in places outside of those traditional considered to be Muslim. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/islamic-studies

How were Moroccan Muslim and Jewish cultures depicted in Spanish literature, journalism, and photography during the Rif War and what did this portrayal reveal about conflicting visions of Spanish identity? Runner-up for the 2017-18 AHGBI-Spanish Embassy Publication Prize Spanish National Identity, Colonial Power, and the Portrayal of Muslims and Jews During the Rif War (1909-27) (Boydell & Brewer, 2021), examines how anxieties about colonial power and national identity are reflected in Spanish literature, journalism, and photography of Moroccan Muslim and Jewish cultures during the Spanish colonisation of Northern Morocco from 1909 to 1927. This understudied period, known as the Rif War, is highly significant because of its role in shaping the identities that came into conflict in the Spanish Civil War (1936-39). Furthermore, the book makes a key contribution to Spanish colonial studies by offering a comparative analysis of Spanish representations of the Iberian Peninsula's cultural and historical relationship with Moroccan Muslims and Jews in this context, showing how conflicting visions of Spanish identity are portrayed through and in relation to them. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/islamic-studies

In this episode of Radio ReOrient, Claudia Radiven and Chella Ward spoke to Adi Saleem and Shanon Shah. They discussed the recent publication of the book Queer Muslims, Queer Jews: Race, Religion, and Representation (Wayne State UP, 2024) that Adi edited and Shannon contributed a chapter. Adi is an assistant professor at the University of Michigan with a focus on the intersection of race and religion, particularly in relation to Jews and Muslims. Shannon is a Visiting Research Fellow at the Department of Theology and Religious Studies at King’s College London with a focus on ethnographic study of religion, contemporary Islam and Christianity, new religious movements, gender and sexuality, popular culture, and social movements. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/islamic-studies

Atiya Husain’s No God but Man: On Race, Knowledge and Terrorism (Duke University Press, 2025) uses the FBI Most Wanted lists to rethink theoretical relationships between race and Islam in the United States. Husain traces the genealogy of wanted posters and how theories of the “average man” informs the use of photographs and its accompanying descriptions on most wanted posters. To probe this pattern further, she closely considers the activism and Islam of Black revolutionary Assata Shakur and her addition to the FBI Most Wanted Terrorist List in 2013. Shakur was the first woman added to this list and joins Muslims, who are oddly not racialized in the descriptions on the poster. This peculiar pattern forces us to contend with how race as a category oscillates between racelessness and race, and therefore reveals the categorical limitations of the discourses of racialization of Muslims. It is here that the work of Black Studies scholars, such as Sylvia Wynter, offers us necessary conceptual pathways forward. This book will be of interest to anyone thinking about race, Islam, and terrorism, surveillance or security studies, and Black Studies. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/islamic-studies