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Global Currents

Racialized Asylum, Moral Inversion, and the Erosion of Refugee Norms: The Case of White Afrikaner Resettlement in the United States

Series: Afrikaner Refugees and the Geopolitics of White Supremacy

A. Rashied Omar
June 9, 2025June 12, 2025

When refuge becomes the privilege of the powerful rather than the shield of the vulnerable, we are not merely distorting the ideals of humanitarianism, we are dismantling them.
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Costly Solidarity

Contending Modernities
May 19, 2025May 22, 2025

Rev. Munther Isaac called for an interfaith coalition for justice to combat theologies of supremacy and exclusion that make genocide possible.
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Amalek, Hamas, and Kant: Thoughts on Evil in the Time of War

Shaul Magid
March 26, 2025

Likening Hamas to Amalek is self-serving. It is as if saying, “we are good people who can act badly, but they are simply evil.”
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Theorizing Modernities

Engaging our Imagination with Decolonizing Religion and Peacebuilding

Series: Symposium on Decolonizing Religion and Peacebuilding

Jean-Pierre Reed
June 12, 2025

How does one get from religion-based peacebuilding practices that maintain existent orders of domination to peacebuilding practices that challenge and potentially transcend orders of domination?
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A Transnational Feminist Reflection on “Doing Religion” and “Knowing Religion”

Series: Symposium on Decolonizing Religion and Peacebuilding

Keunjoo Christine Pae
June 6, 2025June 10, 2025

Without critical analysis of the gendered, racialized, and sexualized asymmetry of power . . . interreligious peacebuilding serves only a heteropatriarchal neocolonialism.
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Introduction to Symposium on Decolonizing Religion and Peacebuilding

Series: Symposium on Decolonizing Religion and Peacebuilding

Joshua S. Lupo
May 30, 2025June 6, 2025

Decolonizing Religion and Peacebuilding asks the peacebuilding industry to look inward about the assumptions it makes about religion and its broader location within the ideological contours that shape modernity.
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Decoloniality

No Peace without Decolonization: A Lecture and Interview with Nelson Maldonado-Torres

Nelson Maldonado-Torres, Atalia Omer and Joshua S. Lupo
April 9, 2024April 9, 2024

Decolonial love is about the possibility of connection (and relation) when connection seems completely impossible.
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On the Advantage of Not Fitting In: Religious-National Identities as Border-Living

Slavica Jakelić
November 2, 2022February 1, 2024

Only when the Balkans are considered as succumbing to neither Northern nor Southern theoretical or praxis-oriented frameworks, can we ensure that all ways of being and living locally are truly listened to.
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The Myth of the Secular Revolutionary: On Fanon’s Religion

Series: Reconsidering Fanon and Religion

An Yountae
April 7, 2022February 1, 2024

Fanon’s critique of religion winds up being a powerful critique of the secular. Contrarily, Fanon seeks refuge in the secular in order to resignify the human but he ends up repurposing religion along the way.
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Field Notes

Safety through Solidarity: A Book Launch

Contending Modernities
January 27, 2025January 27, 2025

White supremacy, under the pretense of fighting antisemitism, is mounting an assault on minoritized communities. Understanding how antisemitism works is central to fighting back.
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David Grossman’s Camouflage of Violence

Omri Ben Yehuda
December 27, 2024December 27, 2024

Grossman’s story is first of all the story of a mother whose burning love for her young son collapses under the national narrative of violence and death.
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Israel’s Genocidal Assault on Gaza: A Lecture with Raz Segal

Contending Modernities
December 17, 2024December 18, 2024

How do scholars distinguish genocide? What does intentionality, defense, and the Holocaust have to do with it?
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Teaching Contending Modernities

Religious Nationalism: Narratives, Conflict, and Peacebuilding

Victoria Basug Slabinski and Prithvi Iyer
August 14, 2024September 30, 2024

This module provides an account of how religious nationalisms shape global politics and allows readers to examine the convergences and divergences among various forms of religious nationalism in diverse contexts.
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The Politics of the Gender, Sexuality, and Religion Nexus: Perspectives from the Margins

Victoria Basug Slabinski and Nicolas "Nicola" Chehade
April 1, 2024April 4, 2024

This module draws on the resources of the Contending Modernities blog to explore the interlocking dynamics of race, gender, sexuality, and coloniality in modernity.
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Religious Studies and Theology: Decolonial Perspectives in/on the Disciplines

Victoria Basug Slabinski
September 13, 2023February 1, 2024

This introduction to religious studies through a decolonial lens explores the contestation over the colonial Christian heritage of the field, the role of the secular in maintaining hegemonic Christian norms in the academy, and the importance of thinking interdisciplinarily about the future of the field.
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Research Areas

Featured Publications

Editors Atalia Omer and Joshua Lupo examine the tenacious, lingering impact of European colonial ideology on religion and politics around the world in Religion, Modernity, and the Global Afterlives of Colonialism. Part of the Contending Modernities series through Notre Dame Press.

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Blog Leadership

Atalia Omer, CM Co-Director and Professor of Religion, Conflict and Peace Studies

Josh Lupo, CM Assistant Director

A Note on Published Content

The opinions expressed on this blog are solely those of the individual authors and do not represent the official opinions of the Contending Modernities research initiative, the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, the Keough School of Global Affairs, the University of Notre Dame, or their faculty and staff.

Featured

Global Currents

Racialized Asylum, Moral Inversion, and the Erosion of Refugee Norms: The Case of White Afrikaner Resettlement in the United States

Costly Solidarity

Amalek, Hamas, and Kant: Thoughts on Evil in the Time of War

Theorizing Modernities

Engaging our Imagination with Decolonizing Religion and Peacebuilding

A Transnational Feminist Reflection on “Doing Religion” and “Knowing Religion”

Introduction to Symposium on Decolonizing Religion and Peacebuilding

Decoloniality

No Peace without Decolonization: A Lecture and Interview with Nelson Maldonado-Torres

On the Advantage of Not Fitting In: Religious-National Identities as Border-Living

The Myth of the Secular Revolutionary: On Fanon’s Religion

Field Notes

Safety through Solidarity: A Book Launch

David Grossman’s Camouflage of Violence

Israel’s Genocidal Assault on Gaza: A Lecture with Raz Segal

Teaching Contending Modernities

Religious Nationalism: Narratives, Conflict, and Peacebuilding

The Politics of the Gender, Sexuality, and Religion Nexus: Perspectives from the Margins

Religious Studies and Theology: Decolonial Perspectives in/on the Disciplines

Research Areas

Madrasa Discourses

Science and the Human Person

Reexamining Religion and Modernities

Authority, Community, and Identity

Global Migration and the New Cosmopolitanism

Featured Publications

Upcoming Events

Blog Leadership

A Note on Published Content