Islam Archives | Contending Modernities

Kharg, the Orphan Pearl: War, Extraction, and Spectral Histories

Babak Rahimi
March 26, 2026March 26, 2026

Kharg still holds histories waiting to be uncovered—spectral traces that have shaped the island through mourning and devotion, where land and sea were not merely resources but sites of sacred belonging.

Imitatio Imam: Reimagining Imitation as a Bridge to the Other

Series: Symposium on The Muslim Difference

Haroon Sidat
March 6, 2025March 6, 2025

Muslims in the West, like others, can maintain and hold on to their theological claims, while beautifying their social presence with and among others.

The Necessary Alterity of Mimesis and its Effects

Series: Symposium on The Muslim Difference

Ashwak Hauter
February 19, 2025February 19, 2025

The unknowability and oscillation of the soul imbue individuals with a radical otherness or alterity.

Imitation as Becoming: Didactic Mimesis in Youshaa Patel’s The Muslim Difference

Series: Symposium on The Muslim Difference

Anna Bigelow
February 13, 2025

Patel leads us to a generative space of inquiry, offering multiple routes of exploration as we seek to understand human nature and the human quest to know ultimate reality.

The Rising Call to Codify Gender Apartheid: Epistemic Resistance and International Accountability

Tahmina Sobat
November 21, 2024April 3, 2025

Transnational solidarities should focus on challenging patriarchal structures and the imperialist systems that sustain them.

Mitri Raheb and the Legacy of the West in the Middle East

Series: Symposium on The Politics of Persecution

Gary Burge
September 7, 2023

Western powers and in particular, the U.S., have been instrumental in breaking up the most ancient Christian community in the Middle Eastern world.

Mosques and Muslims in the “Evergreen City of India”: Exploring India’s Pluralism

Mohammad Ali
March 1, 2023January 24, 2024

Pluralism not only denotes a tolerance towards others, but also offers an opportunity to intermingle and exchange and thus mitigate difference.

At the End of Reason: On Anne Norton on the Muslim Question

Series: Mirza Family Chair Inaugural Symposium

Mahmoud Youness
February 7, 2023February 9, 2023

When the western imaginary happened to be puritanical, Muslims were cast as lascivious and dissolute, when the western imaginary loosened up a bit, Muslims became sexually suppressed.

Teaching Islamic Poetry Beyond Orientalism

Series: Symposium on Say What Your Longing Heart Desires

Brenna Moore
November 30, 2021January 20, 2022

Haeri’s book enables us to keep this mystical language alive in our classroom while making sure we don’t ossify it as the orientalists did, and only see it as part of Islam’s past, the domain of rarefied male elites, and as disconnected to living Muslims today