Islam
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Quick Review: Shahab Ahmed, What is Islam
Omar Ali reposts an old review of Shahab Ahmed’s What Is Islam?, finding the book unclear about its aim but a good rebuttal to monochrome views of Islam. His verdict…
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Pakistan, the Successor State to Islamistan
Pakistan is usually read as drifting ever deeper into theocracy. We argue the reverse: its elite has quietly secularised, keeping Islam as the national language while shedding it as the…
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Between Arab Conquest and Persian Conversion: The Sasanian Inheritance
X.T.M uses Hugh Kennedy and Ira Lapidus to argue that conquest and conversion were different processes in Iran, rejecting both the viral claim of mass forced conversion and the opposite…
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Hijab: Between Revelation and Regulation
The author argues that the Qur’an never commands a garment called hijab, using the word for a barrier or curtain, and that it offers a theology of modesty, not a…
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Brown Pundits: Broad Church or Narrow Canon?
X.T.M answers Kabir’s charge of ‘soft Hindutva’ bias at Brown Pundits, arguing the forum’s bias is civilisational engagement rather than Hindutva, that Hindu introspection drives much of its energy, and…
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Jewish Muslim Relations
In a series on Jewish-Muslim relations, Hamid Hussain compares prayer and pilgrimage in the two faiths, noting mutual acceptance of monotheism alongside rival claims about the authenticity of each other’s…
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Sacred Texts and Jewish-Muslim Relations
In a series on Jewish-Muslim relations, Hamid Hussain compares the Tanakh and the Quran, which each faith holds as revelation, noting shared themes and narratives alongside real differences that interfaith…
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The Confluence of Two Seas: India and Arabia
The author opens with Dara Shikoh’s treatise on the similarities of Hinduism and Islam and his execution under Aurangzeb, then sets out to tell the story of Arabia before and…
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Their Muslim Problem—And Ours
On the row over an advertisement showing an interfaith marriage, the author argues critics dodge its gendered side, since Islam allows Muslim men but not women to marry out, and…
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Open Thread – 08/22/2020 – Brown Pundits
Open thread of 22 August 2020. The opening note warns commenters against Hindu nationalist tropes about Islam and says traditional Muslim historiography should not be taken at face value, any…
