Reading Muslims

The 1980 Hague Abduction Convention was intended to create international consensus over how to handle cases in which one parent absconded with their child over an international border, effectively leaving the other parent without clear legal recourse. Dr. Emon sheds light on the historical ideas and assumptions that have made it difficult for the Hague Convention to gain acceptance among Muslim majority countries. On the one hand, Emon explains the Euro-centric elements of the Hague Convention. On the other, he traces historical Islamic legal norms around jurisdiction, which he terms "cadastral jihad", to highlight its intimate links to notions of empire.

Host: Youcef Soufi

Date recorded: October 14th, 2022

Dr. Nagra discusses the findings of her research with educated second-generation Muslims in Toronto and Vancouver. Nagra analyzes Canadian Muslims' exclusion from citizenship post 9/11. She details her interviewees experiences with racism, the state's border authorities, and security agencies. Nagra reveals the different forms of resistence that young Muslim women and men have adopted in response to anti-Muslim racism and their calls to see the promises of multiculturalism become a reality.

Host: Youcef Soufi

Date recorded: June 7th, 2022

Sunera Thobani, Professor in the Asian Studies Department at UBC, discusses her new book, Contesting Islam: The Inordinate Desire of the West (2021). Dr. Thobani recounts the historical constructions of Muslims and the West through an critical engagement with postcolonial theorists, race theory, feminism, and queer theory.

Host: Youcef Soufi

Date recorded: April 14, 2022

Professor Suzanne Marchand joins the Reading Practices Hub to discuss German Orientalism and the philological approach. She gives an overview of the history of German Orientalism and the reason for choosing it as a subject of her study. In the episode, Prof. Marchand also discusses the critique of philology and mentions that some critics of philology lack a comprehensive understanding of it.

Host: Mohannad Abusarah

Date recorded: May 23rd, 2022

In this episode of the Reading Muslims podcast, the Muslim Association of Canada (MAC)'s director of education and communication, Khaled Al-Qazzaz, discusses MAC as both a place of knowledge transmission and producer of Islamic knowledge in Canada. Specifically, he begins by explaining the texts that centrally inspire and shape MAC's mission in the Canadian Muslim community, citing the Quran, hadith, and the writings of reformer Hassan al-Banna. These foundational texts form the basis of MAC's self-understanding and pedagogical vision, which is channelled into myriad organizational forms including MAC's own textual productions for various community-targeted initiatives. Elaborating on this output, Khaled discusses the impact of MAC's current textual projects and future directions.

Host: Sara Hamed

Date recorded: December 8th, 2021.

Professor Junaid Quadri joins the Reading Practices Hub to discuss theoretical questions related to the study of Islamic thought. He focuses on the connection between thought and practice in the Islamic tradition, especially in Islamic law. He also discusses the question of continuity and rupture in a way that he revised the dominant narrative. He then elaborates on his approach in studying Islamic texts in relation to the context in which they emerged. Finally, he answers the question of interdisciplinarity and his way of constructing an organic interdisciplinary method.

Host: Mohannad Abusarah

Date recorded: January 11th, 2022

Professor Noah Salomon joins this episode of the Reading Muslims podcast to discuss the role texts and textuality came to play in his ethnography of the Islamic State in Sudan, For Love of the Prophet (Princeton University Press 2016). He reflects on what it means to approach texts not only as an object of study, but also as a method that informs one's ethnographic practice. Professor Salomon also discusses his new project, which travels between Muscat, Khartoum, and Beirut to examine the production of religious difference within Islam in post-revolutionary moments.

Host: Abdulla Majeed

Date recorded: December 14th, 2021. 

Dr. Tazeen Ali joins the Anthropology of Islam Hub to discuss her upcoming book project, Authorizing Women: Islamic Authority at the Women’s Mosque of America with New York University Press. She lays out the gendered and racialized landscape of the U.S. Muslim religious authority and what is and isn’t new about Women’s Mosque of America’s approach to Islamic religious authority in the U.S. Dr. Ali reflects on what it means to authorize the lay American Muslim woman to read and interpret the Qur’an for herself.

Host: Iman AbdoulKarim

Date recorded: September 8th, 2021

Dr. Bullock explains the vision of Compass Books and how both her academic and activism careers inspired her to found the company. She elaborates various challenges in the book publishing industry, and the role her company aims to play in Muslim identity formation. She discusses how Compass Books walks a fine and often tricky line as it tries to cater to both Muslim families looking for quality books offering Islamic education, and secular public schools that are hesitant to incorporate faith-based texts in their libraries.

Host: Sara Hamed

Recorded: Sep 5, 2021

Dr. Fadel joins this special edition podcast to discuss his beginnings in academia, and his observations about the field of Middle Eastern studies over time. He is joined by Dr. Emon as the two come together to discuss their approaches to Islamic law and legal studies, where textuality (and debates about it) has been and will likely continue to be central to the field of Islamic Legal studies.

Recorded: June 2021

Basit Iqbal explores methodological debates in anthropology that have centered on the varying role of texts. The conversation turns to the difference between an anthropology of Muslims and an anthropology of Islam; the vexed disciplinary relationship between theology and anthropology; and the capacity of textually-grounded concepts to offer unexpected perspectives. He recounts how the role of texts in his own ethnographic project shifted and also impasses he now faces in the writing of violence.

Host: Joud Alkorani

Date recorded: Dec 25, 2020

Dr. Fadel joins this special edition podcast to discuss his beginnings in academia, and his observations about the field of Middle Eastern studies over time. He is joined by Dr. Emon as the two come together to discuss their approaches to Islamic law and legal studies, where textuality (and debates about it) has been and will likely continue to be central to the field of Islamic Legal studies.

Recorded: June 2021

Dr. Nukhet Varlik discusses the history of the plague and epidemic diseases in general. She elaborates on how some of the terminology used in plague studies still carries a colonial legacy and how the discovery of the pathogen responsible for the bubonic plague has helped counter some of these biased and disconnected accounts of the disease. She also stresses the importance of interdisciplinarity not only in interpreting sources but also in the future direction of the field.

Host: Sara Ameri

Recording date: Jun 24, 2021

Dr. Fadel joins this special edition podcast to discuss his beginnings in academia, and his observations about the field of Middle Eastern studies over time. He is joined by Dr. Emon as the two come together to discuss their approaches to Islamic law and legal studies, where textuality (and debates about it) has been and will likely continue to be central to the field of Islamic Legal studies.

Recorded: June 2021

Dr. Fadel joins this special edition podcast to discuss his beginnings in academia, and his observations about the field of Middle Eastern studies over time. He is joined by Dr. Emon as the two come together to discuss their approaches to Islamic law and legal studies, where textuality (and debates about it) has been and will likely continue to be central to the field of Islamic Legal studies.

Recorded: June 2021

Dr. Ali Usman Qasmi joins the Reading Muslims podcast to discuss the poltiics of readership in a post-colonial context, and how this politics plays out specifically in Pakistan. He speaks to us about the epistemic paraphernalia of classic Islamic jurisprudence texts and how it is appropriated for the legal structures of the modern nation-state. He also speaks about how reading practices that align with state ideals of Muslim citizenship can be instrumental to the process of Othering marginalized Muslim identities, and how scholarship can be used to read against the grain.

Host: Aaisha Salman

Date recorded: Apr 13, 2021

Professor Amira Mittermaier describes how her trajectory from being a student of Islamic Studies in Germany to an anthropologist in North America has shaped how she approaches texts in her research today. She reflects upon the multitude of ways texts matter to Muslims in Egypt, providing examples of the ways she centers these written works in her fieldwork—by reading key texts alongside her interlocutors, for instance. Professor Mittermaier also introduces listeners to her latest project, Ethnographies of God, exploring how it helps trouble the demarcation between anthropology and theology, and considering what this unsettling means for anthropologists of Islam and their engagement of texts.

Recorded: Dec 17, 2020

Professor Suzanne Conklin Akbari joins the Reading Muslims podcast to discuss reading practices with regards to Islamic texts and how they have changed the way we traditionally study Islam. She speaks about the plural temporality of texts, and how they impact different time periods in history. This episode covers the politics of how we read Islamic texts and how we distinguish between the materiality and history of the texts within academia.

Professor Nada Moumtaz joins the Reading Muslims podcast to discuss anthropology’s relationship to textuality in modern day research and fieldwork. This episode covers the complexities and difficulties that come with trying to engage in a tradition of textuality that is incredibly vast, and nuanced. Professor Moumtaz speaks about the different approach to methods and ethnography that exist within the field, and how the field is actively changing to reflect new practices of scholarship.

Recorded: December 14, 2020

Professor Bahoora joins the Reading Muslims podcast to discuss the formation of new genres and new modes of reading that correspond to historical shifts that shaped the emergence of the modern Arab world. He discusses the implications of using the word “Islamic” to describe texts. While also discussing historical and current reading practices and how they were affected and transformed by the Nahda.

Recorded: Nov 24, 2020

Professor Elizabeth Shakman Hurd joins the Reading Muslims podcast to discuss state surveillance of Muslims. She situates the discussion through freedom of religion within the American project and explores how it is used as a device to further US political interests abroad. This podcast episode also explores how language can be co-opted by civilizational discourse and how this effects the way Islamic texts are read and perceived by the state.

Recorded: October 8th, 2020

On Oct 16th, a French schoolteacher in the suburbs of Paris named Samuel Paty was murdered by a Muslim man for showing his classroom caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad. The aftermath has placed Islam and Muslims under scrutiny with the government claiming that "Islamist separatism" is challenging the Republic's values and unity. In this podcast, Juliette Galonnier, Assistant Professor at Science Po Paris's Institute for International Research, sheds light on the Republic's fears over Islam and Muslims. Galonnier addresses how the current political upheaval has put the academic freedom of French researchers under threat. Detractors accuse French academics of appropriating "North American theories", including critical race theory, that are complicit in diminishing the threat of Islam and Muslims. In this powerful and topical conversation, Galonnier highlights ways that North American scholars can stand in solidarity with their colleagues overseas.