New Books in Islamic Studies

By Marshall PoeReligion & Spirituality Islam

New Books in Islamic Studies episodes

September 04, 2018 Lev Weitz, “Between Christ and Caliph: Law, Marriage, and Christian Community in Early Islam” (U Pennsylvania Press, 2018)
Recent years have seen new waves of research in Syriac studies, the medieval Middle East, and family history. Combining all three, Lev Weitz’s Between Christ and Caliph: Law, Marriage, and Christian Community in Early Islam (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018), revisits the early years of Islamic civilization by looking at an oft-neglected population in the secondary literature, Syriac Christians. Weitz’s study uses marital practice from the seventh through tenth centuries to illustrate how Islamic law influenced the development of Christian law and the role religious authorities –that is the Christian bishops– had to play in it. We talk through polygamy, confessional boundaries, and what households meant now and then; Weitz also fills us in on what the growing field of Syriac studies looks like, how it is changing, and how a scholar of the medieval Middle East gets their sources.
Lev Weitz is an historian of the Islamic Middle East. He is an assistant professor at the Catholic University of America, in the Department of History; he also directs the Islamic World Studies program at Catholic University. For academic year 2018-19, he will be a fellow of the Kluge Center at the Library of Congress. He did his PhD at Princeton University at the Department of Near Easter Studies. His scholarly interests lie in the encounters among Muslims, Christians, and Jews that have shaped the Middle East’s history from the coming of Islam to the present.
Nadirah Mansour is a graduate student at Princeton University’s Department of Near Eastern Studies working on the global intellectual history of the Arabic-language press. She tweets @NAMansour26 and produces another Middle-East and North Africa-related podcast: Reintroducing.

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1 hr 6 min
September 03, 2018 Harold Morales, “Latino and Muslim in America: Race, Religion, and the Making of a New Minority” (Oxford UP, 2018)
Harold Morales, an associate professor of Religion at Morgan State University, is the author of the momentous new book, Latino and Muslim in America: Race, Religion, and the Making of a New Minority (Oxford University Press, 2018). Morales’ monograph provides a rich ethnographic analysis of various Latino Muslim communities, groups, and individuals in America. Situated in the context of hyper-racialization of post 9/11, Morales carefully lays out his interlocutors’ powerful journeys of reversion (instead of conversion) to Islam and how they form historical and cultural continuities but also transformations, such as through evoking Islamic Spain (Al-Andalus) or food cultures. With its intersection of race, ethnicity, religion, and media studies, Morales’ has made a formidable contribution to the study of Islam in America, but also broadly on American religious experiences.
M. Shobhana Xavier is an Assistant Professor of Religion at Queen’s University. Her research areas are on contemporary Sufism in North America and South Asia. She is the author of Sacred Spaces and Transnational Networks in American Sufism(Bloombsury Press, 2018) and a co-author of Contemporary Sufism: Piety, Politics, and Popular Culture (Routledge, 2017). More details about her research and scholarship may be found on here and here. She may be reached at [email protected].

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46 min
August 22, 2018 Cyrus Ali Zargar, “The Polished Mirror: Storytelling and the Pursuit of Virtue in Islamic Philosophy and Sufism” (Oneworld, 2017)
Cyrus Ali Zargar, Associate Professor at the University of Central Florida, is the author of The Polished Mirror: Storytelling and the Pursuit of Virtue in Islamic Philosophy and Sufism (Oneworld, 2017). Zargar explores how the study of good character and the pursuit of perfection, or virtue ethics, was part of a broader discursive network that included Islamic jurisprudence, theology, philosophy and mysticism. Using the metaphor of the polished mirror and the tradition of storytelling shared by Islamic philosophers and Sufis, Zargar frames virtue ethics not as a fixed notion, but as part of a network that broadly engages ideal positive character traits. Each chapter of the book focuses on various philosophers or Sufis from the years 900 to 1300. Each of these figures variously framed ethics through sacred revelation (Qur’an) and prophetic tradition (hadith) all the while incorporating rationality or traditions of exemplary saintly figures. Despite their differing modes and methodologies, at times, their conclusions were similar. For instance, the philosophers, such as Avicenna and Ibn Tufayl, having gleaned from the ancient Greek traditions, amplified traits of friendship and love for the betterment of society. While for some Sufis, the quest for human perfection set them on a path that focused on the cultivation of internal qualities, as seen in the tales of Ansari, ‘Attar, and Rumi. The stories told here are provocative, humorous, and truly pedagogical. They help the reader transcend normative notions of ethics, especially as limited to Islamic jurisprudence and positive law, and highlights the complex ways in which philosophers and Sufis were intimately focused on being good and doing good as taught through storytelling. This book is a must for anyone working on Islamic philosophy and Sufism.
M. Shobhana Xavier is an Assistant Professor of Religion at Queen’s University. Her research areas are on contemporary Sufism in North America and South Asia. She is the author of Sacred Spaces and Transnational Networks in American Sufism(Bloombsury Press, 2018) and a co-author of Contemporary Sufism: Piety, Politics, and Popular Culture (Routledge, 2017). More details about her research and scholarship may be found on here and here. She may be reached at [email protected].

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43 min
August 21, 2018 Ahmad Dallal, “Islam without Europe: Traditions of Reform in Eighteenth-Century Islamic Thought” (UNC Press, 2018)
In Middle Eastern and Islamic intellectual history, there has long been an assumption of decline in the eighteenth century, right before the nineteenth century, when the nahda or Arabic intellectual renaissance, began: intellectuals were caught in a period of stagnation and retrograde. Ahmad Dallal pushes back against this in Islam without Europe: Traditions of Reform in Eighteenth Century Islamic Thought (University of North Carolina Press, 2018), bringing together an intricate matrix of ideas stemming from multiple fields of knowledge. He pins this all together with the notion of reform, all the while reminding us that reform is also about tradition. He starts with Wahhabism, carefully dissecting the thought of Muhammad ibn Abdel Wahhab, and then connects it to eighteenth century responses to Wahhabism. From there on, he draws in Hadith studies, Sufism, the concept of Ijtihad in legal reasoning, and legal theory to paint a tapestry of interlaced and dynamic ideas. Overwhelmingly, Dallal demonstrates that reform was tied to giving practicing Muslims increasing control over their own faith. Beyond that, Dallal talks to us about Islamic studies, Orientalism, and modernity, elucidating why we need to bring the 18th century back into the fold of Islamic and Middle Eastern intellectual history.
Ahmad Dallal is the dean of Georgetown University in Qatar. He was professor of history (2009-2017) and was the provost at the American University in Beirut (AUB) from 2009 to 2015.
Nadirah Mansour is a graduate student at Princeton University’s Department of Near Eastern Studies working on the global intellectual history of the Arabic-language press. She tweets @NAMansour26 and produces another Middle-East and North Africa-related podcast: Reintroducing.

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1 hr 33 min
July 31, 2018 Eren Tasar, “Soviet and Muslim: The Institutionalization of Islam in Central Asia” (Oxford UP, 2017)
How was the Soviet Union able to avoid issues of religious and national conflict with its large and diverse Islamic population? In his new book, Soviet and Muslim: The Institutionalization of Islam in Central Asia (Oxford University Press, 2017), Eren Tasar argues that the Soviet Union was successful in building its relationship with Muslims in Central Asia because it created a space for Islam within the state’s ideology.
Exploring sources from Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan, Tasar gives readers an understanding of how the USSR created and used institutions to manage Islam following World War II. Soviet and Muslim provides a new prospective on the relationship between Islam and the Soviet state as it shows that the relationship between them was not based on government oppression of religion, rather it was one of accommodation and flexibility on both sides. Tasar also shows the continuities between tsarist and Soviet policy towards Muslims in Central Asia, and places Soviet Muslim policy in a global context.
Kimberly St. Julian-Varnon is a History Instructor at Lee College.
Enter the code “NBN10” and get 10% off this book and any other book at University Press Books, Berkeley.

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56 min
July 31, 2018 Eren Tasar, “Soviet and Muslim: The Institutionalization of Islam in Central Asia” (Oxford UP, 2017)
How was the Soviet Union able to avoid issues of religious and national conflict with its large and diverse Islamic population? In his new book, Soviet and Muslim: The Institutionalization of Islam in Central Asia (Oxford University Press, 2017), Eren Tasar argues that the Soviet Union was successful in building its relationship with Muslims in Central Asia because it created a space for Islam within the state’s ideology.
Exploring sources from Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan, Tasar gives readers an understanding of how the USSR created and used institutions to manage Islam following World War II. Soviet and Muslim provides a new prospective on the relationship between Islam and the Soviet state as it shows that the relationship between them was not based on government oppression of religion, rather it was one of accommodation and flexibility on both sides. Tasar also shows the continuities between tsarist and Soviet policy towards Muslims in Central Asia, and places Soviet Muslim policy in a global context.
Kimberly St. Julian-Varnon is a History Instructor at Lee College.
Enter the code “NBN10” and get 10% off this book and any other book at University Press Books, Berkeley.

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Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/islamic-studies
56 min
July 24, 2018 John O’Brien, “Keeping it Halal: The Everyday Lives of Muslim American Teenage Boys” (Princeton UP, 2017)
What do the social worlds of teenage Muslim American boys look like? What issues do they grapple with and how do they think about issues that arise in their everyday lives? In his new book Keeping it Halal: The Everyday Lives of Muslim American Teenage Boys (Princeton University Press, 2017), John O’Brien answers these questions and more. An overarching theme of the book is just how ordinary and common, in a teenage sense of things, these boys’ lives are. O’Brien uses three years of ethnographic data and interviews to provide context and analysis of the lived experiences of Muslim American teenage boys. Emphasizing the culturally contested lives of these boys, O’Brien explores topics like music, dating, and balancing their religious experiences with their teenage experiences. In addition to learning about the boys’ lives, O’Brien encourages us to experience some of the broader issues that the Muslim American community deals with in everyday life.
Overall, through the stories provided and accessible language and explanations, this book would be of interest to a wide audience. For Sociology specifically, this book would be a good addition to a course on religion or youth, and would be easily digested by undergraduate and a perfect addition to a graduate level course.
Sarah E. Patterson is a postdoc at the University of Western Ontario. You can tweet her at @spattersearch.

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50 min
July 20, 2018 Ata Anzali, “‘Mysticism’ in Iran: The Safavid Roots of a Modern Concept” (U South Carolina Press, 2017)
In his sparkling new book, “Mysticism” in Iran: The Safavid Roots of a Modern Concept (University of South Carolina Press, 2017), Ata Anzali, Assistant Professor of Religion at Middlebury College, offers a sweeping and brilliant intellectual history of the concept of ‘Irfan in medieval, early Modern, and modern contexts. Combining a mesmerizingly layered analysis of previously unexplored manuscripts with close attention to shifting social and political contexts, Anzali shows, with dazzling nuance, the processes and dynamics that informed the institutionalization of ‘Irfan in Iran. This nimbly written book will be of considerable interest to scholars of Muslim intellectual history and Religious Studies. In this conversation, we talked about the key themes, theoretical interventions, and arguments of this book.
SherAli Tareen is Assistant 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 academic publications are available here. He can be reached at [email protected]. Listener feedback is most welcome.

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52 min
July 19, 2018 Jamie Stern-Weiner, “Moment of Truth: Tackling Israel-Palestine’s Toughest Questions” (OR Books, 2018)
Jamie Stern-Weiner’s new edited volume, Moment of Truth: Tackling Israel-Palestine’s Toughest Questions (OR Books, 2018) seeks to clarify what it would take to resolve the Israel-Palestine conflict, to assess the prospects of doing so, and to illuminate the future possibilities for the region.

37 min
July 16, 2018 Alexander Bevilacqua, “The Republic of Arabic Letters: Islam and the European Enlightenment” (Harvard UP, 2018)
In The Republic of Arabic Letters: Islam and the European Enlightenment (Harvard University Press, 2018), Alexander Bevilacqua uncovers a different side of the European Enlightenment, at least with regards to its engagement with Arabic and Islam. Instead of polemics, he tells the story of how books and ideas moved across continents and were studied in Europe, where they were considered a serious object of engagement. He first tracks the movement of books to Europe, then the translation of Arabic’s most famous book—the Qur’an—culminating in the study of Arabic-language materials, which he refers to as the Republic of Arabic Letters. He draws on sources in multiple languages to paint a picture of a vibrant long-distance intellectual community (or the Republic of Arabic Letters) that, for a brief period before European colonial encounters, admired, rather than derided the Arab and Muslim intellectual traditions. He talks to us about the inspiration for the book, why he thinks this intellectual community was so important, and where he sees his work amidst the greater sea of scholarship.
Alexander Bevilacqua is an Assistant Professor of History at Williams College. He specializes in the cultural and intellectual history of early modern Europe (ca. 1450 to 1800). He was educated at Harvard College, University of Cambridge, and Princeton University. From 2014 until 2017 he was a junior fellow in the Harvard Society of Fellows. His work has appeared in History of European Ideas, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, and Past and Present. He has edited, along with F. Clark, Thinking in the Past Tense: Eight Conversations (Forthcoming in December 2018 with University of Chicago Press) and he won the Thomas J. Wilson Memorial Prize of Harvard University Press for The Republic of Arabic Letters: Islam and the European Enlightenment.
Nadirah Mansour is a graduate student at Princeton University’s Department of Near Eastern Studies working on the global intellectual history of the Arabic-language press. She tweets @NAMansour26 and produces another Middle-East and North Africa-related podcast: Reintroducing.

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55 min

About New Books in Islamic Studies

From the publisher's feed

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.