[Maydan Podcast] A Common Word-Episode 1 | Younus Mirza Hosts Rachel Mikva
The Maydan Podcast · A Common Word | Episode 1- Younus Mirza Hosts Rachel Mikva One of the reasons I have been drawn to A Common Word and the Islamic Mary or Maryam in…
Book Forum | Disenchanting the Caliphate: The Secular Discipline of Power in Abbasid Political Thought (Columbia Univ Press, 2023) by Hayrettin Yücesoy | Contributions by John Curry, Han Hsien Liew, Evrim Binbaş and Hayrettin Yücesoy
Book Forum | Disenchanting the Caliphate: The Secular Discipline of Power in Abbasid Political Thought (Columbia Univ Press, 2023) by Hayrettin Yücesoy | ISBN: 9780231209410 (Paperback) $35.00, 392 pages. John Curry | University of Nevada, Las…
[Book Review] When Only God Can See: The Faith of Muslim Political Prisoners by Walaa Quisay & Asim Qureshi (Pluto Press, 2024 )
For decades, Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning held a special place in psychotherapeutic literature. Frankl wrote his thoughts immediately after having survived a Nazi concentration camp. There he observed a stark difference between those…
Ambiguity as a Master Key: Critically Reading Thomas Bauer’s Culture of Ambiguity
Introduction A Culture of Ambiguity by Thomas Bauer may be one of the most significant books in Islamic Studies in recent decades.[1] Originally published in German in 2011, it was not until 2021 that it…
[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…
[PROGRAM] Special BAMI Themed 7th Annual Graduate Student Book Review Colloquium | Online | December 7, 2023
Special BAMI Themed 7th Annual Graduate Student Book Review Colloquium | Program December 7, 2023 ONLINE on Zoom | Register at https://gmu.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJAkcu6hrzgpHdc584wi52lC3sc21YQi6j0l 9:30am- 10:00 am Welcome and introduction to BAMI | Dr. Maria Dakake, Dr. Ahmet…
Forum on Tazeen Ali’s The Women’s Mosque of America: Authority and Community in US Islam
This forum brings six scholars into discussion with Tazeen Ali’s The Women’s Mosque of America: Authority and Community in US Islam. In line with the book’s main argument, the reviewers [amina wadud, Esra Tunc, Iman…
[Book Review] Prophet al-Khidr: Between the Qur’anic Text and Islamic Context by Irfan A. Omar | Reviewed by Zhenshan (Alex) Dong
The hermeneutical transcendence of the stories of al-Khidr appears as the resonance of faith in human yearning for the world beyond our reach. Professor Irfan A. Omar’s Prophet al-Khidr: Between the Qur’anic Tet and Islamic…
Understanding Political Islam Beyond Existing Paradigms A Review Essay on The Many Faces of Political Islam and Rethinking Political Islam
Over the last fifty years, Islam’s geopolitical presence has significantly expanded, allowing for expanded dialogue on the role of religion and the effects of Islam on the political stage. This has given rise to new…
How to Renew Islam in Seven Days? Three Recent Contributions to Ulema Studies
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…
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
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
BOOK FORUM | Rivals in the Gulf by David H. Warren with Courtney Freer, Walaa Quisay, and Usaama al-Azami
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;…
[Book Review] Usaama Al-Azami’s Islam and the Arab Revolutions: The Ulama Between Democracy and Autocracy
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…
[Deadline Sept 15] Special BAMI Themed 7th Annual Graduate Student Book Review Colloquium
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…
[Book Review] Lara Harb, “Arabic Poetics: Aesthetic Experience in Classical Arabic Literature” (Cambridge, 2020) Reviewed by Hamzah Hashmi
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…