In The Fate of the Jews in the Early Islamic Near East: Tracing the Demographic Shift from East to West (Cambridge UP, 2022), Phillip Lieberman revisits one of the foundational narratives of medieval Jewish history--that the rise of Islam led the Jews of Babylonia, the largest Jewish community prior to the rise of Islam, to abandon a livelihood based on agri ... Show More
Yesterday
Theologies of Remembering: Modernity, Ambiguity, and Transcendence in Islamic Indonesia with Verena Hanna Meyer (U California Press, 2026)
The claim to moderate or modernist Islam in Indonesia is particularly contentious today, as these labels participate in the global politics of identity for Muslims past and present. Who gets to claim to be representative of an Islam that is modernist, progressive, or tolerant? Wh ... Show More
47m 45s
Oct 18
Islamic Ethics and Spiritual Sovereignty: Genres of Tradition in Muslim South Asia with Ali Altaf Mian (U Notre Dame Press, 2026)
Islamic Ethics and Spiritual Sovereignty: Genres of Tradition in Muslim South Asia (U Notre Dame 2026) explores the rich vast textual archive of Maulana Ashraf Ali Thanavi, a South Asian Muslim theologian and Sufi. Mian’s deep and careful reading of Thanavi’s diverse genres of te ... Show More
1h 12m
Oct 16
Governing Islam in Austria and Germany, with Farid Hafez
In this episode, hosts Claudia Radiven and Amina Easat-Daas were joined by Farid Hafez to discuss his most recently published book Governing Islam in Austria and Germany: From Colonial Times to the Present (Oxford UP, 2026). Hafez’s recent work centres on the comparative analysis ... Show More
47m 44s
Jul 2025
Marc Herman, "After Revelation: The Rabbinic Past in the Medieval Islamic World" (U of Pennsylvania Press, 2025)
After Revelation: The Rabbinic Past in the Medieval Islamic World offers a dynamic new perspective on medieval Jewish legal thought and its integration in the wider Islamic world. Here, Marc D. Herman demonstrates that Jews were fully conversant in their contemporaries' ideas ab ... Show More
47m 20s
Apr 2024
Loren D. Lybarger, "Palestinian Chicago: Identity in Exile" (U California Press, 2020)
Chicago is home to one of the largest, most politically active Palestinian immigrant communities in the United States. For decades, secular nationalism held sway as the dominant political ideology, but since the 1990s its structures have weakened and Islamic institutions have gai ... Show More
1h 23m
Feb 2025
Amit Levy, "A New Orient: From German Scholarship to Middle Eastern Studies in Israel" (Brandeis UP, 2024)
A New Orient: From German Scholarship to Middle Eastern Studies in Israel (Brandeis UP, 2024) explores the fascinating history of Zionist and Israeli "Oriental Studies" (mizrahanut), particularly the study of Islam, Arabic, and the Middle East, as a field deeply rooted in the aca ... Show More
1h 9m
Apr 2024
Loren D. Lybarger, "Palestinian Chicago: Identity in Exile" (U California Press, 2020)
Chicago is home to one of the largest, most politically active Palestinian immigrant communities in the United States. For decades, secular nationalism held sway as the dominant political ideology, but since the 1990s its structures have weakened and Islamic institutions have gai ... Show More
1h 21m