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,…
The Legend of Korra’s Zaheer and the Dark Fantasies of the War on Terror
Avatar: the Last Airbender (ATLA) is an artfully woven story in which victims of genocide and imperialism unite to fight against a global empire. But in the sequel series, The Legend of Korra (TLOK), which…
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…
“#We_are_all_responsible”: Bio-power and the Early Saudi Religious Response to Pandemic
“#We_are_all_responsible”: Bio-power and the Early Saudi Religious Response to Pandemic With a crisis like COVID-19 comes trepid opportunity, and in Saudi Arabia, home to Islam’s two holiest shrines, the once-defanged “religious police” have returned with…
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…