Akbar's Chamber - Experts Talk Islam

Salafism has gained a great deal of media attention over the past twenty years, but for all that remains poorly understood. Part of the reason is a paradox at the heart of the name and goals of the Salafis themselves. In taking their name from the pious ‘ancestors’ (al-salaf)—the first generations of Muslims in the seventh century—the Salafis are deeply concerned with following the original and authentic Islam practiced by those who were closest to the Prophet Muhammad. But since the Salafi movement developed in the twentieth century, it inevitably emerged in modern settings, begging the question of its relationship with modernity. Focusing on the majority non-violent Salafi movements, this episode begins by defining Salafism, before identifying its key concerns—not least with the outward visible expressions of ‘ancestral’ piety that, surprisingly, include wearing shoes within mosques. We’ll then dig deeper into the entanglement of Salafi practices with the no less radical transformations of modernity to which the Salafi Muslims have responded.  Nile Green talks to Aaron Rock-Singer, In the Shade of the Sunna: Salafi Piety in the Twentieth-Century Middle East (University of California Press, 2022).

According to a famous saying of the Prophet Muhammad, “A true dream constitutes one forty-sixth part of prophethood.” Over the following centuries, countless Muslim thinkers discussed the hidden problem in that saying: how to distinguish a ‘true dream’ from other kinds of dreams, whether mundane ones caused by illness and indigestion or more worrying ones sent by Satan. Consequently, Muslims developed a rich tradition of dream theory, drawing on sources as varied as ancient Greek texts, Sufi theosophy, and in more recent times European psychology. In this episode, we’ll see how these theories and debates play out in the modern Middle East. Focusing on Egypt, we’ll examine how the dreams of ordinary Muslims are understood by Sufi masters, TV dream interpreters, religious reformists, and secular psychoanalysts. Nile Green talks to Amira Mittermaier, author of Dreams that Matter: Egyptian Landscapes of the Imagination (University of California Press, 2010), which won the Clifford Geertz Prize from the American Academy of Religion.

In this episode we explore the contents of a remarkable medieval library: the Ashrafiya of Damascus. What makes the Ashrafiya important isn’t so much its fame in its own time, but the survival of an extraordinary document: the oldest Arabic library catalogue ever discovered. Using this as our guide, we take a tour of the library, from its location between the eighth century Umayyad mosque and the mausoleum of Saladin’s nephew to the bookshelves placed opposite the windows to avoid the risk of burning lamps. Although the Ashrafiya was far from the largest medieval Arabic library when the catalogue was written in the 1270s, it still held over 2000 books – a number that even the University of Cambridge wouldn’t reach for another century. Still more significant is the sheer variety of subjects it covered, helping us reconstruct the larger intellectual context in which Muslim religious ideas took shape. Nile Green talks to Konrad Hirschler, the author of Medieval Damascus: Plurality and Diversity in an Arabic Library (Edinburgh University Press, 2016), which was awarded the biennial Best Book prize by the Middle East Medievalists society. It is available open-access here: https://www.academia.edu/13464354/Medieval_Damascus_Plurality_and_Diversity_in_an_Arabic_Library_-_The_Ashrafiya_Library_Catalogue

Usually in Akbar’s Chamber we pursue questions of inter-religious understanding. But in this episode, we explore its flip side by way of the religious misunderstandings—and plain disagreements—between Christians and Muslims which were amplified in modern period by the spread of printing through the Middle East. After outlining the context in which Muslim scholars began both debating Christianity and debating with Christian missionaries, we’ll turn to a case study of an especially important figure in the Muslim public sphere: Rashid Rida (1865-1935). By examining his sources of information on Christianity, we’ll see the curious co-dependence of Christian and Muslim scholars who increasingly relied on the same sources of information, and misinformation. Nile Green talks to Prof. Umar Ryad (Professor of Arabic and Islamic Studies at the University of Leuven in Belgium and the Director of the Leuven Centre for the Study of Islam, Culture and Society). He is he the author of Islamic Reformism and Christianity: A Critical Reading of the Works of Muhammad Rashid Rida and his Associates (1898-1935) (Leiden: Brill, 2009), which is available open-access here: https://brill.com/view/title/16450

Studies of 19th and 20th century Chinese history often focus on Christian missionary activities in China. But the same period saw members of China’s Hui (or Sino-Muslim) community reconnect with their co-religionists overseas. Armed with knowledge of Arabic, Persian, and Urdu, and trained in new religious schools overseas, these Hui scholars began to "rediscover" aspects of Islam and in the process rewrite the history of Islam in China both for audiences within China and for non-Chinese audiences elsewhere. In this episode, we examine why these Sino-Muslim exchanges with colonial India and Egypt took place and explore some of the implications for Islam in China. Yiming Ha of the Chinese History Podcast talks to Nile Green, the regular host of Akbar’s Chamber, about some of the themes of his new book, How Asia Found Herself: A Story of Intercultural Understanding (Yale University Press, fall 2022). This episode is a collaboration with The Chinese History Podcast.

Shi‘ism is usually thought of in relation to the Middle East, especially Iran and Iraq. But India and Pakistan have a combined population of up to 50 million Shi‘ite Muslims. While venerating the sacred history of the battle of Karbala—where the third Shi‘i imam Husayn was martyred in 680 CE—these Indian and Pakistani Shi‘ites have developed their own rich regional traditions, especially in terms of ceremonies, buildings, and material culture. Such is the aesthetic and emotional appeal of these traditions that they have also attracted not only Sunni participants, but even certain Hindus, such as the centuries-old community of Husayni Brahmins. In this episode, we’ll learn about the rituals, relics, and sacred sites through which the Shi‘is of South Asia and their non-Shi‘i sympathizers annually recreate Karbala in cities and villages across the subcontinent. Nile Green talks to Karen Ruffle (Associate Professor of History of Religions at the University of Toronto), the author of Everyday Shiʿism in South Asia (Wiley-Blackwell, 2021).

“Two facts confront someone studying Islam. One is the astounding variety of practices and beliefs that from place to place and time to time are considered to be Islam. The other is that Muslims, despite their manifest differences in practice and belief, tend to recognize one another as fellow Muslims”.  So writes Kevin Reinhart in explaining the problem that confronts anyone, Muslim or non-Muslim, in facing the visible facts of Islam in practice. In this episode, we explore ways to make sense of what is at once the plurality and unity of lived Islam. By using the analogy of language, we see how Islam can be interpreted as being ‘like’ a language that has ‘dialect’ features and ‘shared’ (or koiné) features, as well as a ‘standard’ version that, like the English of grammatical textbooks, isn’t necessarily followed by most speakers of English. Nile Green talks to A. Kevin Reinhart (Associate Professor of Religion at Dartmouth College), the author of Lived Islam: Colloquial Religion in a Cosmopolitan Tradition (Cambridge University Press, 2020).

In this episode we’ll explore the history of a ‘hidden caliphate’ through which scholar-saints of the Naqshbandi Sufi order provided social stability during times of tremendous political upheaval. The Sufis in question were followers of Ahmad Sirhindi, who in the years after his death in 1624 – or 1034 in the Muslim calendar – designated him as the ‘Renewer of the Second Millennium.’ In the following centuries, his network expanded from northern India through Afghanistan to Central Asia, Russia and China, bringing his teachings to men and women from every rank of society. We’ll explore the doctrines, both moral and mystical, practical and spiritual, that enabled these ‘scholar-saints’ to maintain social order and justice after the tumultuous collapse of the Mughal Empire. Nile Green talks to Waleed Ziad, the author of Hidden Caliphate: Sufi Saints Beyond the Oxus and Indus (Harvard University Press, 2021).

Africa’s Islamic traditions receive far less attention than is warranted by their intellectual and spiritual wealth. Because African Muslims have not only been major contributors to Arabic learning for a millennium or more. They also developed writings in their own languages that enriched Islam through insights and idioms drawn from the experience of African life. Known collectively as ‘Ajami literatures, these “African languages in Arabic-script” range from Fulani and Wolof in the west of the continent to Somali and Swahili in the east. In this episode of Akbar’s Chamber, we trace the emergence of these African traditions and dip our toes into the deep waters of their moral and spiritual doctrines. By way of example, we’ll also talk about the teachings of the great Senegalese master, Shaykh Ahmadu Bamba (1850-1927). Leading us on our journey is Fallou Ngom, the author of Muslims beyond the Arab World: The Odyssey of ʿAjami and the Muridiyya (Oxford University Press, 2016).

For anyone entering a yoga studio today, the world of Islam might feel a million miles away. Yet for more than a thousand years, practitioners of Yoga have lived side by side with the Muslims of the Indian subcontinent. The history of Islam and Yoga, of Muslims and Hindus, is more than a tale of simple coexistence, though. It’s also a story of close interactions and careful comparisons, of Persian translations of Sanskrit texts, and Arabic investigations of Yogi doctrines, along with a shared concern with the spiritual value of breath-control. In this episode of Akbar’s Chamber, we’ll be looking at some of the most influential Muslim authors on such topics, including al-Biruni (d.1048) and Muhammad Ghaws (d.1562). But far from burying our heads in recondite manuscripts, we’ll be placing these figures in their living environments, where Sufis regularly encountered ‘Jogis,’ and wondered what they had in common. We’ll also be asking how these medieval encounters can inform our understanding of religious pluralism in Asia today. Nile Green talks to Carl W. Ernst, the author of Refractions of Islam in India: Situating Sufism and Yoga (Sage, 2016).