William Henry Abdullah Quilliam (1856–1932) was arguably the most prominent figure in nineteenth-century Islam in Britain. He declared his conversion publicly in 1887 and then for the next twenty years preached Islam in Liverpool, attracting…
Islam, Authoritarianism, and Underdevelopment: A Global and Historical Comparison is an ambitious project that offers a closer look to a frequently asked question: why does authoritarianism reign supreme in most Muslim-majority countries today? In a…
Rachid Ghannouchi, the charismatic leader of al-Nahda Party, declared that they no longer pursue “political Islam” but rather “Muslim democracy” at his party’s 10th Congress in May 2016. At that time, many people were curious…
In early February 2021, I heard of the passing of Dr. Malik Badri, a Sudanese Muslim psychologist who left an indelible mark on the field of Islamic psychology. The tributes that poured in represented what…
The Maydan Podcast is a production of The Maydan, with dedicated themes around Islamic Studies and related fields. Maydan is an online publication of the Ali Vural Ak Center for Global Islamic Studies at George…
Persian travelogue writing experienced a significant rise during Iran’s Qajar period, and Iranian travelers produced hundreds of travelogues in this era. These travelogues narrated journeys occurring both inside and outside of the country. Some focused…
An Argument within Pan-Islamism: Yusuf Samih Asmay and Abdullah Quilliam in Late Victorian Liverpool
[Book Review] Islam, Authoritarianism, and Underdevelopment: A Global and Historical Comparison, by Ahmet T. Kuru (Cambridge University Press, 2019)| Reviewed by Rana Osman
[Book Review] Inside Tunisia’s Al-Nahda: Between Politics and Preaching (Cambridge University Press, 2018) by Rory McCarthy | Reviewed by Ibrahim Enes Aksu
Islam, Disease and Sex: The Legacy of Malik Badri
Maydan Podcast Launches with Generous Funding from the Henry Luce Foundation
The Ottomans from an Iranian Perspective: Persian Hajj Travelogues as Primary Sources for Ottoman Studies
Persian travelogue writing experienced a significant rise during Iran’s Qajar period, and Iranian travelers produced hundreds of travelogues in this era. These travelogues narrated journeys occurring both inside and outside of the country. Some focused…
Under the rule of Emmanuel Macron, the French state has revealed its true nature. That of a paternalistic and racist machine, which brutalizes its citizens and vilifies its largest minority. Not that this state has…
Revolution and Disenchantment offers a powerful example of critical ethnographic engagement with radical intellectual and militant movements within in a broader intellectual world colored by a postcolonial divide. The book’s main cast is a generation…
Why do two people read the same text and arrive at different conclusions? What does it mean to follow scripture? What roles and limitations do scholars face when interpreting a text? What happens when scholarly…
Zahra Institute Launches Online Kurdish Studies Certificate Program, First of Its Kind in the United States Zahra Institute announced the launch of its Online Kurdish Studies Certificate Program. An interdisciplinary initiative, the eight-week certificate program…
Post-colonial and decolonial theory produced in the Western and Westernized academy tends to be soft on the Left and hard on the Right. Although some scholars, such as Ramon Grosfoguel,[i] state that they wish to…
Penny Sinanoglou’s Partitioning Palestine: British Policymaking at the End of Empire is a richly-researched book interrogating the legal and political mechanics of the British empire’s management of mandatory Palestine. The book dissects the British Empire’s…
In Gendered Morality (2019) Zahra Ayubi asks what it is to be a (good) human. To answer this question, the author delves into the classical texts of three foundational thinkers in this “unified” tradition: Kimiya-…
The Egyptian Uprising through the Lens of the Muslim Brotherhood: A New History of the Movement Assesses Its Failure in Government and the Fallout under Sisi In his introduction to the 1993 edition of Richard…
[Maydan Book Forum] Andrew March, The Caliphate of Man: Popular Sovereignty in Modern Islamic Thought (Harvard University Press, 2019) Andrew March | Ovamir Anjum | M. Owais Khan | Sohaira Siddiqui | Andrew March- Response…
