A recent poetry collection intriguingly titled ʿInd al-thamānīn badaʾt shiʿrī (“At eighty, I Began My Poetry”) by litterateur, senior Azhari Shaykh, theologian, and member of the Supreme Council of Scholars, Ḥasan al-Shāfiʿī (b. 1930), contains...
Shenila Khoja-Moolji’s Rebuilding Community: Displaced Women and the Making of a Shia Ismaili Muslim Sociality (Oxford University Press, 2023). Paperback $29.95, 280 pages, ISBN: 9780197642030. Shenila Khoja-Moolji Shelina Kassam Shemine Gulamhusein Sumaiya Hamdani
Maydan Book forum on Rivals in the Gulf: Yusuf al-Qaradawi, Abdullah Bin Bayyah, and the Qatar-UAE Contest Over the Arab Spring and the Gulf Crisis (Routledge, 2021) by David H. Warren. ISBN 9780367280628; 136 pages;...
At 34°, it is one of the hottest days of the year in Istanbul. And while many Istanbullus might be tempted to stay at home or retreat to a cafe with good A/C, I have...
Discussions of the Islamic Mary or Maryam frequently engage the Qur’an, especially the chapter that is named after her (Surat Maryam). However, it is important to point out that Maryam exists throughout Islamic literature and...
Since the earliest days of Islamic history, Muslims have deliberated over the structure and purpose of the mosque. The Arabic term for mosque, masjid, derives from the Qur’an and translates simply as a place of...
How to Renew Islam in Seven Days? Three Recent Contributions to Ulema Studies
BOOK FORUM | Rebuilding Community: Displaced Women and the Making of a Shia Ismaili Muslim Sociality by Shenila Khoja-Moolji with Shelina Kassam, Shemine Gulamhusein, and Sumaiya Hamdani
BOOK FORUM | Rivals in the Gulf by David H. Warren with Courtney Freer, Walaa Quisay, and Usaama al-Azami
From Istanbul to Mecca: A Journey through Hajj Mementoes from Mid-Twentieth Century Turkey
The Deputy of Maryam – The Mystic Rābi‘a al-‘Adawiyya in Light of the Qur’anic Mary
[IMTF] The Mosque as a Site of Inclusivity
In his Oft-Repenting Ones, Ibn Qudāma (d. 1223) recounts the story of Awlāsī, a pious ascetic from the early centuries of Islam. It so happened that in his youth he stumbled across a sick, homeless…
The Arab Spring proved to be a crucial time in Middle East and North African history as the revolutions manifested from and resulted in an unprecedented level of public contention on the fitness and fate…
My task here is to offer some critical thoughts on the ethics of place and the production of space, with the ‘American mosque’ as a case in point. I have argued in Deconstructing the American Mosque: Space,…
In 1863, Christopher Rhinelander Robert, a businessman dealing in local commerce, and Cyrus Hamlin, a missionary serving in Istanbul, collaborated to found the now-famous Robert College. Its name was taken from its benefactor, though it…
In episode 10 of the “Islam on the Edges” podcast, Ermin Sinanović talks with Prof. Ingrid Mattson about her recent visit to Bosnia and Herzegovina. Religious tourism, including the Muslim version of “halal tourism,” has…
‘Eid Al-Adha, the most important of our holidays, often seems like an afterthought except for those making Hajj. Why is this? We overly celebrate the end of fasting and give gifts joyously. Perhaps because it…
The AbuSulayman Center for Global Islamic Studies at George Mason University (ACGIS) and The Maydan, the Center’s public-facing scholarship platform, present the Seventh Annual Graduate Student Book Review Colloquium on Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies to be held virtually on Thursday, December…
Within the gamut of human experience lies a plethora of emotion. Peering over an insurmountable mountain may evoke feelings of grandeur and awe; the occurrence of an unexpected and favorable coincidence may result in the…
In 1960, when legendary jazz trumpeter Miles Davis released the album Sketches of Spain (listen here), a stunning work of fusion which went on to win a Grammy Award, he unwittingly (but intuitively) bridged a…
In the twenty-first century, economists have increasingly recognized the profound issue of wealth inequality that afflicts societies worldwide. This realization holds true not only in non-Muslim countries but extends to the Muslim world, where disparities…
Maydan editors asked former students of the late Ottoman historian, Cornell Fleischer to reflect on his scholarship, personality, and impact. We remember Prof. Fleischer and his contributions fondly. Evrim Binbaş, University of Bonn What can…
Introduction Atop a rural mesa in Northern New Mexico, where the high desert meets riparian woodlands, there is an adobe mosque. Nubian by design, funded by the Saudi royal family, and built by the hands…
