Hacking Islamic Law
Rumee Ahmed is a brilliant Islamic legal expert at the University of British Columbia. He is both traditionally and academically trained. His book “Sharia Compliant: A User’s Guide to Hacking Islamic Law” was published in…
Anti-Blackness in the Muslim World: Beyond Apologetics and Orientalism
Introduction There is a color line in the Muslim world. How and why? While there are multiple forms of racism based on notions of color and ethnicity that exist within the Muslim world – such…
Qur’anic Ethics and the Moral Imperative of Humanist Da’wa
My recent research has led to an encounter with a critical question for Muslims who live in and must now engage with an increasingly diverse religious landscape: what is da’wa (the Muslim mission to share…
The UAE-sponsored “Islams”: Mapping the Terrain
Though we conceptualize the political and the religious as distinct, in practice, they remain very intertwined, especially in many Muslim-majority countries. Understanding one is crucial in understanding the other. In the case of Muslim-majority countries,…
Is Fiṭra a Replacement for Rational Inquiry? Kalām, Logic, and the Belief in God
Introduction In a recent article titled “Atheism and Radical Skepticism: Ibn Taymiyyah’s Epistemic Critique,” Dr. Nazir Khan argues that rational inquiry is unnecessary for justifying our belief in God; that, in fact, syllogistic reasoning is…
The Modernist Roots of Islamic Autocracy: Shaykh Abdullah Bin Bayyah and the UAE-Israel Peace Deal
Shaykh Abdullah Bin Bayyah’s justification for Islamic autocracy is far from a throwback to an imagined premodern world of Muslim scholars united with pious sultans, but rather, deeply indebted to the reformist idioms of Islamic…
al-Bīrūnī 2.0: The Future of Muslim Studies of the Hindu Tradition
Islam, as a historical tradition, began in early seventh century Arabia. The formative canons of Islamic thought – the Qur’an as well as the voluminous literature describing the early community of Muslims – contain a…
Enchantment, Orientalism, and Modern Mysticism
In Charles Taylor’s magnum opus, A Secular Age, he makes a series of wonderful distinctions about the pre-modern and modern worlds. Among these is the idea that modernity entails a loss of enchantment, a move…
Why the Muslim World Matters: Building a Home with the Homeless
Introduction Anyone who has been homeless can tell you it is not a place you want to be. The pangs of hunger, the cold, lonely nights roaming the street or countryside, the uncomfortable position of…
Covid-19 and Muslim Religiosity: an AVACGIS Webinar Series
The Ali Vural Ak Center for Global Islamic Studies (AVACGIS) at George Mason University is organizing a webinar series that will explore the impact of Covid-19 on various dimensions of Muslim religious life in global…