Featured Publications
Editors Robert W. Hefner and Zainal Abidin Bagir illuminate the less formal yet pervasive processes of lived pluralism in Indonesian Pluralities. Part of the Contending Modernities series through Notre Dame Press.
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Decoloniality
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They Say “Out of Sight, Out of Mind,” Look, We Are All over Palestine
Series: Decoloniality in PracticeTackling the homophobic deployment of religion requires using theological tools that expand interpretations of religious meanings and orients them to the suffering of queer communities.
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Empire and Race in Comparative Religious Ethics
Comparativists ought to ask how imperial and racial formations have shaped the settings within which peoples have acted and thought, regarding them not as wholly determinative but as nevertheless integral components of peoples’ ethical lives.
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Towards a Decolonial Approach to the Qur’an
A decolonial approach to the Qur’an also means de-Christianizing how we understand it as a text and its relationship to Muslims.
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Global Currents
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Uyghur Oppression from a Decolonial Perspective
Since post-colonial times have not (yet) come for the Uyghurs, a decolonial approach to the Uyghur issue must start by assuming the colonial nature of the relations between the Chinese nation-state and both the Uyghurs and their homeland.
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Whose People? The Oppression of Uyghurs and the Idea of the Muslim World
Public callouts against Muslim-majority countries’ silence on Uyghur oppression demonstrate how normative ideas about “the Muslim World” and monolithic ideas about Islam in politics continue to prevail at multiple discursive levels despite vast evidence of the heterogeneity of the politics of Muslim-majority countries.
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Religion, Uyghurs, and the Global War on Terror
While the Uyghur crisis doesn’t revolve solely around Islamic identity and practice, the category “religion” provides an organizing framework that the People’s Republic of China utilizes to justify its continued oppression of the community.
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Theorizing Modernities
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Decolonial Islamic Studies and Defending Muḥammad in Modernity
With remarkable subtlety, Tareen impresses upon the reader the distinction between the ability of colonial modernity to affect the nature of intellectual debates and the ability of colonial modernity to affect the content of those debates.
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The Formation of Religious Identities in Modern Islam: Recounting a Story from Nineteenth-Century South Asia
South Asian Islam, one might argue, still has to come to terms with the new political and cultural realities of the postcolonial context and to find a way in which different religious identities can coexist without undermining the underlying fabric of society.
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Decolonizing the Study of South Asian Islam: Reflections on Defending Muḥammad in Modernity
Why must we employ Western frameworks and categories of analysis like political theology to examine indigenous theological discourses and debates?
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Field Notes
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Literature, Theology, and Abul Kalām Āzād
Series: Madrasa DiscoursesTo think critically means one has to closely study one’s surroundings and look at things in unprecedented ways. We know that the voice of literature has the power to create such new ways of seeing.
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Madrasa Discourses Goes to Bangladesh
Series: Madrasa DiscoursesAt the end of the workshop, it was clear that there was enthusiastic interest in both the topics and approach adopted by Madrasa Discourses. It was also clear that there were unique challenges as well as possibilities that might come with expanding the existing program to include Bangladesh.
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Why Madrasa Graduates Should Study Modern Science and Philosophy: Reflections on an Ongoing Debate on Madrasa Discourses in India
Series: Madrasa DiscoursesThere is a need to have a serious discussion on epistemology in order to rebuild the Islamic tradition in a new manner that is robust and coherent on the one hand, and on the other, is flexible enough to adapt to changing circumstances that future generations are bound to encounter.
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Research Areas
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Madrasa Discourses
A conciliation of traditional Islamic thought with contemporary scientific and philosophical worldviews can result in orthodox affirmations of human dignity that are essential for peaceful coexistence in a pluralistic world.Read More →
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Science and the Human Person
Rapid advances in science and technology are raising fundamental questions about human life, flourishing, suffering, and death. These and other ethical questions at the intersection of science and the human person have a global character, encompassing all of humanity.Read More →
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Reexamining Religion and Modernities
Addressing resurgent populism, antisemitism, and Islamophobia in Euro-America requires integrating diverse approaches to the study of religion and modernity with insights from the critical study of race, nationalism, and peace.Read More →
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Global Migration and the New Cosmopolitanism
The global expansion of migration over the past two generations has ushered in major social and economic changes, as well as profound ethical challenges concerning how citizens are to coexist in pluralistic societies.Read More →