New Books In Islamic Studies

Today’s episode focuses on the intersection of Islam, society, and politics in Indonesia, the world’s single-largest majority Muslim country and the world’s third biggest democracy. Indonesian Islam is notable for its diversity, its associational strength, and its prominent role in both the transition from authoritarian rule to democracy in the late 1990s and in democratic politics in the country since that time. To discuss this huge, complicated topic, Dialogues on Southeast Asia turns to Professor Robert Hefner, Professor of Anthropology and Professor of Global Studies at Boston University. Professor Hefner is the author of four major studies of Islam in Indonesia: Hindu Javanese: Tengger Tradition and Islam (Princeton University Press, 1985), The Political Economy of Mountain Java: An Interpretive History (University of California Press, 1990), Civil Islam: Muslims and Democratization in Indonesia (Princeton University Press, 2000), and, most recently, Islam and Citizenship in Indonesia: Democracy and the

In its first edition, this book focused on the representations of Islam that circulated in the wake of the 9/11 attacks – representations that scholars, pundits, and politicians alike used either to essentialize and demonize it or, instead, to isolate specific aspects as apolitical and thus tolerable faith. This little book’s larger thesis therefore argued for how the classifications that we routinely use to identify and thereby negotiate our social worlds – notably such categories as “religion” or “faith” – are explicitly political. The new edition of Religion and the Domestication of Dissent: Or, How to Live in a Less Than Perfect Nation (Routledge, 2025), which updates the first and adds a new closing chapter, continues to be relevant today – a time when assertions concerning supposedly authentic and homogenous identities (whether shared by “us” or “them”) continue to animate a variety of public debates where the stakes remain high. Thinking back on how Islam was often portrayed in scholarship and popula

It's often touted that Rumi is one of the best-selling poets in the United States. That may be the case but popular renderings of the writings of this 13th-century Muslim have largely detached him from the Islamic tradition, and specifically Sufi mysticism. In Radical Love: Teachings from the Islamic Mystical Tradition (Yale University Press, 2018), Omid Safi, Professor of Islamic Studies at Duke University, places Jalal al-Din alongside luminaries within the rich archive of Islamic Sufi poetry. In this anthology of newly translated poetry Safi focuses on love, especially ‘ishq/eshq, what he renders as “radical love.” The volume organizes translations of Qur’an and Hadith, Sufi mystics and poets into four thematic sections: God of Love, Path of Love, Lover & Beloved, and Beloved Community. Radical Love does an excellent job of introducing readers to key ideas from Islamic mysticism that are rooted in first hand knowledge of Arabic and Persian texts. This book is valuable to both the scholar and the student be

A major new history of Saudi Arabia, from its eighteenth-century origins to the present day Saudi Arabia is one of the wealthiest countries in the world, a major player on the international stage and the site of Islam’s two holiest cities. It is also one of the world’s only absolute monarchies. How did Saudi Arabia get to where it is today? In Saudi Arabia: A Modern History (Yale UP, 2025), David Commins narrates the full history of Saudi Arabia from oasis emirate to present-day attempts to leap to a post-petroleum economy. Moving through the ages, Commins traces how the Saud dynasty’s reliance on sectarianism, foreign expertise, and petroleum to stabilize power has unintentionally spawned secular and religious movements seeking accountability and justice. He incorporates the experiences of activists, women, religious minorities, Bedouin, and expatriate workers as the country transformed from subsistence agrarian life to urban consumer society. This is a perceptive portrait of Saudi Arabia’s complex

US-born Protestant evangelicalism has gone global to an extent of which many of us might be unaware. Soul by Soul: The Evangelical Mission to Spread the Gospel to Muslims (Columbia Global Reports, 2024) tells the story of Americans’ colossal mobilization to proclaim Christianity “to the ends of the Earth,” a movement that triumphed in the Global South, challenged the Vatican, then turned east in full force after 9/11 to spread the Gospel among Muslims. When the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq set off a wave of anti-American attacks and made the field too dangerous for US missionaries, thousands of disciples, particularly from Latin America, were mobilized to finish the task. In Soul by Soul, journalist Adriana Carranca follows the pilgrimage of a missionary family from Brazil as they move to Afghanistan. Carranca brings us on a harrowing journey through the underground passages of the global evangelical movement as it clashes with the full force of militant Islamic groups in the Middle East and South Asia, wher

Focusing on Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī (d. 1111) – one of the foremost scholars and authorities in the Muslim world who is central to the Islamic intellectual tradition – this book embarks on a study of doubt (shakk) and certainty (yaqīn) in his epistemology. Ghazālī’s Epistemology: A Critical Study of Doubt and Certainty (Routledge, 2024) looks at Ghazālī’s attitude to philosophical demonstration and Sufism as a means to certainty. In early scholarship surrounding Ghazālī, he has often been blamed as the one who single-handedly offered the death-blow to philosophy in the Muslim world. In much of contemporary scholarship, Ghazālī is understood to prefer philosophy as the ultimate means to certainty, granting Sufism a secondary status. Hence, much of previous scholarship has either focused on Ghazālī as a Sufi or as a philosopher; this book takes a parallel approach, and acknowledges each discipline in its right place. It analyses Ghazālī’s approach to acquiring certainty, his methodological scepticism, his foundat

The collection of wisdom fables known as Kalila and Dimna began its long literary life in Sanskrit more than two millennia ago, and was subsequently translated to numerous languages. But it is the Arabic version, adapted from Middle Persian by the eighth-century scholar Ibn al-Muqaffa, that has left the most substantial literary footprint. A foundational text of classical Arabic prose and the basis for translations into Hebrew, Syriac, Castilian, Latin, Persian, and more, versions of Kalila and Dimna exists in hundreds of manuscript copies held in libraries around the world. Kalila and Dimna is the focus of Isabel Toral and Beatrice Gruendler's new work An Unruly Classic: Kalīla and Dimna and Its Syriac, Arabic, and Early Persian Versions (Brill: 2024). In this collected volume, members of the Kalila and Dimna project discuss, from different perspectives, a core aspect of their work with this textual tradition: the study of variation and mutability. The aim is to shed light on Kalila and Dimna’s so-called mou

Murad Idris, a political theorist in the Woodrow Wilson Department of Politics at the University of Virginia, explores the concept of peace, the term itself and the way that it has been considered and analyzed in western and Islamic political thought. War for Peace: Genealogies of a Violent Ideal in Western and Islamic Thought (Oxford University Press, 2018) traces the concept of peace, and the way it is often insinuated with other words and concepts, over more than 2000 years of political thought. Idris begins with Plato’s Laws as one of the early sources to consider the tension that seems to be constant in terms of the pursuit of violence in order to attain peace. War for Peace provides some important framing in thinking about peace, in large measure because the research indicates how rare it is for peace itself to be solitary, it is almost always lassoed to other words and concepts, and functions either as a binary opposition (e.g.: war and peace) or as part of a dyad combination (e.g.: peace and justice).

In The Hindu Self and its Muslim Neighbors, the author sketches the contours of relations between Hindus and Muslims in Bengal. The central argument is that various patterns of amicability and antipathy have been generated towards Muslims over the last six hundred years and these patterns emerge at dynamic intersections between Hindu self-understandings and social shifts on contested landscapes. The core of the book is a set of translations of the Bengali writings of Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941), Kazi Nazrul Islam (1899-1976), and Annada Shankar Ray (1904-2002). Their lives were deeply interwoven with some Hindu-Muslim synthetic ideas and subjectivities, and these involvements are articulated throughout their writings which provide multiple vignettes of contemporary modes of amity and antagonism. Barua argues that the characterization of relations between Hindus and Muslims either in terms of an implacable hostility or of an unfragmented peace is historically inaccurate, for these relations were modulate

Challenging the geographical narrative of the history of Islam, Chiara Formichi’s new book Islam and Asia: A History (Cambridge University Press, 2020), helps us to rethink how we tell the story of Islam and the lived expressions of Muslims without privileging certain linguistic, cultural, and geographic realities. Focusing on themes of reform, political Islamism, Sufism, gender, as well as a rich array of material culture (such as sacred spaces and art), the book maps the development of Islam in Asia, such as in Kashmir, Indonesia, Malaysia, and China. It considers both transnational and transregional ebbs and flows that have defined the expansion and institutionalization of Islam in Asia, while attending to factors such as ethnicity, linguistic identity and even food cultures as important realities that have informed the translation of Islam into new regions. It is the “convergence and conversation” between the “local” and “foreign” or better yet between the theoretical notions of “centre” and “periphery” o

Ian Johnson’s new book, The Souls of China: The Return of Religion After Mao (Pantheon, 2017),  was called "a masterpiece of observation and empathy" by The New York Review of Books, and The Economist, who included the book on its Best of 2017 list, said the book, "Shows how a resurgence of faith is quietly changing the country." The Guardian said the book is "full of moving encounters with Chinese citizens ... Johnson succeeds in having produced a nuanced group portrait of Chinese citizens striving for non-material answers in an era of frenetic materialism." I just finished the book myself and was stunning in its portrayals. If you hope to understand the trajectory of modern China, arguably the fastest-rising international superpower, understanding the religious Taoist, Christianity, folk religion, and Islam of China will be helpful, if not essential. A Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist, Ian Johnson is a regular contributor to The New York Review of Books and The New York Times; his work has also appeared in

Islam is a religion of violence and behind every Muslim there lurks a potential terrorist. Islam is a threat to values of the Christian West. They are like oil and water. Clearly, they don't mix. One God and Two Religions: Christians and Muslims as Neighbors (Fortress Press, 2025) confronts these popular perceptions head-on. With keen insight and gentle understanding, Amir Hussain explores the differences between Christianity and Islam, as well as the many things these two enduring faith traditions hold in common - including, first and foremost, their belief in and desire to be faithful to the one, true God; their shared roots and scripture (from the Jewish faith); and the spiritual values of peace and social justice. In all of this, the book invites the reader to a place of reconciliation, to a place where the truth and value of each of these great faith traditions can be recognized and honored by the other. In the end, the metaphor of oil and water is an interesting one for the reality of conflict and the

After Revelation: The Rabbinic Past in the Medieval Islamic World offers a dynamic new perspective on medieval Jewish legal thought and its integration in the wider Islamic world. Here, Marc D. Herman demonstrates that Jews were fully conversant in their contemporaries' ideas about revelation, law, and legal interpretation. Bookended by the two luminaries of medieval Judaism--Saadia Gaon and Moses Maimonides--After Revelation analyzes the legal theory that medieval Jews produced in Islamic lands, mostly in Arabic, and reveals previously unrecognized commonalities between Jewish and Islamic constructions of religious law. Herman tackles one of the central doctrines of post-biblical Judaism: that God had supplemented the written Hebrew Bible with an Oral Torah. Tracing this idea from Baghdad to Córdoba to Cairo, he shows that the Oral Torah took many new forms in the medieval Islamic world. After Revelation makes plain that medieval Judaism took the shapes that it did largely because of contact with Islam. Y

In light of the profound physical and mental traumas of colonization endured by North Africans, historians of recent decades have primarily concentrated their studies of North Africa on colonial violence, domination, and shock. The choice is an understandable one. But in his new monograph, A Slave between Empires: A Transimperial History of North Africa (Columbia University Press, 2020), M’hamed Oualdi asks how a history of the modern Maghreb might look if we did not perceive it solely through the prism of European colonization, and argues that widening our gaze might force us to redefine our understanding of colonialism — and its limits. As a sequel of sorts to his first book, Oualdi explores the life and afterlife of one figure, the manumitted slave and Tunisian dignitary Husayn Ibn ‘Abdallah, as an aperture through which to understand the financial, intellectual, and kinship networks that mingled with processes of colonialism and Ottoman governance in unexpected ways to produce the modern Maghreb. A master

In December 2024, the long and bloody stalemate in Syria broke down. In a transformation breathtaking for its suddenness and speed, President Bashar al-Assad, the beating heart of Arab authoritarianism, fled to Russia, his dungeons emptying as rebels overcame the Syrian army with scarcely a fight. Euphoria at the collapse of a government people never voted for was tempered by fear for the future. The victorious insurgents were supported by outside powers and had a track record of brutality comparable to Assad’s in addition to religious fanaticism. Syrians—whose fragile, cosmopolitan mosaic has been repeatedly shattered by foreign-backed sectarians—faced rule by an avowedly Islamist regime that pledged to break with its past and show tolerance to all religious communities. In Syria: Civil War to Holy War? (OR Books, 2024), Charles Glass shows how Assad’s misrule, Sunni fundamentalism, and Western deceit combined to create and prolong the Syrian disaster, which since 2011 has claimed more than two hundred tho

A History of the Muslim World: From Its Origins to the Dawn of Modernity (Princeton UP, 2024) by Michael A. Cook This book describes and explains the major events, personalities, conflicts, and convergences that have shaped the history of the Muslim world. The body of the book takes readers from the origins of Islam to the eve of the nineteenth century, and an epilogue continues the story to the present day. Michael Cook thus provides a broad history of a civilization remarkable for both its unity and diversity.After setting the scene in the Middle East of late antiquity, the book depicts the rise of Islam as one of the great black swan events of history. It continues with the spectacular rise of the Caliphate, an empire that by the time it broke up had nurtured the formation of a new civilization. It then goes on to cover the diverse histories of all the major regions of the Muslim world, providing a wide-ranging account of the key military, political, and cultural developments that accompanied the eastward

Research shows that repression can lead to both radicalization and deradicalization. When does it drive groups to pick up arms, and under what conditions does it foster disengagement from violence? To answer these questions, it is important to trace tactical changes over time, and to parse the factors that push groups toward or away from violence. Through an examination of four case studies—the Muslim Brotherhood and Al-Gama'a al-Islamiya'a in Egypt, and Darul Islam and Jemaah Islamiyaa in Indonesia—Ioana Emy Matesan establishes a framework for understanding what leads groups to escalate towards violence, or to renounce it. Matesan breaks down how escalation occurs into ideological, organizational, and behavorial escalation, giving us a nuanced and systematic approach to examining the complex nature of Islamist groups and providing a structure for analyzing other social groups that engage in violent tactics. The Violence Pendulum: Tactical Change in Islamist Groups in Egypt and Indonesia (Oxford UP, 2020).

Love in Sufi Literature: Ibn ‘Ajiba’s Understanding of the Divine Word (Routledge, 2023) explores the role of divine love in the Quranic commentary of the Moroccan Sufi scholar Aḥmad Ibn ʿAjība (d. 1224/1809). Through close textual analysis of Ibn ʿAjība’s exegesis al-Baḥr al-madīd—The Abundant Ocean—and drawing on his other Sufi writings the book illuminates the scholar’s theory of divine love, drawn from his scholarly antecedents, to elucidate its role and the scholar’s impact on the wider field of Quranic scholarship. This close analysis is supplemented by a comparative approach focusing on several other eminent and influential Sufi commentaries. What is displayed is that Ibn ʿAjība’s exegesis connected theoretical works on the concept of divine love to their practical application, a breakthrough in Sufi literature. The study situates Ibn ‘Ajība’s thought in theological and historical perspective, engaging with his mystical approach which integrates his theory of divine love with other Sufi doctrines in a

The Collective Dream: Egyptians Longing For A Better Life (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023) links two seminal moments in Egypt’s history – the Revolution of 25th January 2011 and the presidency of Gamal Abdel Nasser – through various cultural manifestations. It conceives the concept of “collective dreaming” to map out the subliminal feeling that runs deep through experiences of socially transformative moments. Sarah Nagaty has extensively studied the structure of feelings that encompasses the experiences not only of activist minorities but the broader mass of revolutionary movements. In certain historical moments, hopes and aspirations bind together millions of people from all walks of life: students, workers, farmers, and middle-class professionals. Nagaty calls this phenomenon the “collective dream”, something which has been carried through generations of Egyptians. In this episode, Ibrahim Fawzy sat down with Sarah Nagaty to discuss the conceptual roots of the collective dream and the overlooked histories of Nub

Simon Stjernholm's new book Sensing Islam: Engaging and Contesting the Senses in Muslim Religiosity (Bloomsbury Press, 2025) considers specific case studies of embodiment and oratory productions by Muslims in Denmark, Sweden, and Cyprus. In the chapter on approaching God, we learn how rituals such as du‘a (intercessory prayers) or dhikr (remembrance of God) informs sensorial experiences of the divine, particularly intimate ones, while the discussion on meditating on Muhammad considers the bodily aspects of Prophet Muhammad, such as his saliva, urine, and sweat that influence mawlid literatures and ritual performance of them within Sufi communities like the Naqshbandi-Haqqanis. Though rituals emerging from embodied understandings of holy figures are not without some tension, as we learn throughout the book but especially during the discussion on graves. Here the interred bodies of Sufi saints are caught up in debates around the permissibility of shrine visitation, a topic that comes up amongst lectures given b