Imam Ali and His Wisdom for the Interreligious Life
This past July Muslims around the world entered the new Islamic year of 1446. The first Islamic month of Muharram is a moment in which Muslims not only observe the important fast of Ashura but…
[IMTF] Brought up by the zāwiya: Leisure and Morality in Islamic Social Spaces
Islam is not only spatially-embedded. Like any other religion, it is also a mode and labor of space-making; and it has particular ways of imagining, talking about, making sense of, practicing, and experiencing space that…
Pathologizing Resistance: Colonial Self-Absolution from the Plantation to Palestine
America’s political elite has been busy searching for explanations as to why cities and campuses across the country have erupted in protests over Israel’s recent mass-slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza. As they portray it, this…
The Starvation of Gaza, Palestinian Food Sovereignty & The Question of Accountability
“In Palestine, over 1 million people – half of the population of the Gaza Strip – is expected to face death and starvation by mid-July.” Even the staid UN FAO-WFP, ever striving for apolitical ‘neutrality,’…
[Book Review] Timur Kuran, Freedoms Delayed: Political Legacies of Islamic Law in the Middle East (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023)
In Freedoms Delayed, Timur Kuran attempts to reveal how Sharī’ah affects “Patterns of civic engagement, understandings of religious liberties, distributions of political power, and relative economic capabilities…” (p . 4) Kuran, a prolific scholar whose…
BAMI and GAZA In CONTEXT Present | A Virtual Roundtable: On Campus Dissent
On behalf of the Black American Muslim Internationalism Project (BAMI) and Jadaliyya’s “Gaza in Context Series” we invite you to join us for a virtual roundtable on campus dissent on Saturday, June 8th at 7pm…
VIDEO: Dr. Sherman Jackson | Shari’ah and the Islamic Secular: Between Political Theology and Political Philosophy
Shari’ah and the Islamic Secular: Between Political Theology and Political Philosophy The Annual Anwar Ibrahim Lecture @AbuSulayman Center for Global Islamic Studies at George Mason University; delivered by Dr. Sherman Jackson on April 16, 2024….
[IMTF] Mahalla in Uzbekistan: An Embodiment of Muslim Values of Neighbourliness and Mutual Support
Introduction By nature, every person’s life is organised in such a way that for his own existence and achievement of the highest perfection, he needs many things that he cannot provide for himself alone. He…
Palestine: A Liberation Theology Response
Colonialism is not a thinking machine, is not a body endowed with reason. It is violence in the state of nature and can only bow to greater violence. – Frantz Fanon[1] Before the dust had…
The Wahhabi Roots of Saudi Nationalism and the Persistence of Religious Nationalism
In January, 2022, Saudi Arabia announced that the following month, on February 22nd, 2022, the kingdom would begin celebrating a new national holiday. This celebration, termed “Founding Day,” pushed back the inception of the nation…
[IMTF] Mosques as Cosmopolitan Spaces in the Malay World
In his study of mosques in Europe, Roemer van Toorn noted that a mosque “is not just a house to honour God, but a place to come together, a collective space for the community. In…
[IMTF] “A Third Space within the Masjid”: The Origins of the Qahwa Café and Youth Center of the ADAMS Center
“Muslim minorities in the non-Muslim world will ultimately realize that their history has put them in a position somehow reminiscent of the Prophet’s Meccan period. Their isolation will purify and strengthen their belief. It will…