Theorizing Modernities Archives | Contending Modernities

Nourishing Hospitality: Jolyon Mitchell Interviews Mona Siddiqui

Jolyon Mitchell and Mona Siddiqui
May 26, 2017May 26, 2017

Generosity wasn’t just the act of giving; it’s the most noble thing that you could do. Because in the harsh desert environment, if you weren’t generous to your guests or to the stranger, the stranger would die.

Hospitality and Empire

Perin Gurel
May 26, 2017May 26, 2017

Except this time, within this new, muscular, postcolonial hospitality, the erstwhile settler gets to play gracious host.

Expanding the Conversation on Hospitality in Islam

Martin Nguyen
May 26, 2017May 26, 2017

The interview “Nourishing Hospitality,” conducted by Jolyon Mitchell with author and scholar Mona Siddiqui, is not only a useful introduction…

Action as Prayer: Lessons from Oceti Sakowin

Jonathan Brenneman
April 3, 2017

The prayer practices at Oceti Sakowin camp offered a holistic and positive relationship between prayer and action, a relationship not often found between prayer and action within Christianity.

Prayer, Peace, and the Imagination: A Catholic Sacramental Perspective

Caesar Montevecchio
March 30, 2017March 30, 2017

Ritual and sacrament can serve as powerful vehicles for social transformation.

“To Be Absolutely Fair and Impartial”: Religious Instruction and Near East Relief’s Turn to Development

Francis Bonenfant-Juwong
March 23, 2017March 23, 2017

The Near East Relief transition to a “non-sectarian” missionary organization in the 1920s was largely a pragmatic adjustment that enabled continued provision of spiritual support. To be non-sectarian, therefore, cannot be conflated with being secular.

Is Prayer Proselytism? Examining the Ethics of Religious Practices in Transnational Faith-Based Organizations

Tanya Schwarz
March 20, 2017May 23, 2017

What constitutes proselytism (or “evangelism”) is contested and debated within and among faith-based organizations. For some, merely living as a “Christian” can constitute “witness” or “lifestyle evangelism.”

Brand Islam: Response to Reviewers

Faegheh Shirazi
March 15, 2017March 15, 2017

Designer clothing brands that cater to Muslim consumers in the Middle East have mushroomed, in spite of the fact that some of this clothing is manufactured in Muslim-unfriendly countries.

“Material Fatwas” and the Politics of Recognition

Vincent Miller
March 10, 2017March 10, 2017

Even when driven only by profits, corporate producers of consumer goods inevitably deploy the cultural power of their brands to offer recognition to minority consumers.

From Politics of Piety to Islamic Commodification: Asymmetry and Agency in the Studies of Islam

Slavica Jakelić
March 8, 2017March 9, 2017

While Muslims as believers might focus on halal in the context of the global market as the realm that enables them to exert theological, cultural, and political agency against Western modernity, the impulses that shape their theological orientations and religious acts seem quite aligned with some aspects of that modernity.

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