Category: Book Reviews
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Sonja Brentjes on the Post-Classical Sciences: Continuity, Patronage, Debate
Sonja Brentjes’ book reassesses the history of sciences in Islamicate societies from the 13th to 17th centuries, challenging notions of decline after the classical period. She argues that rational sciences coexisted with religious studies in madrasahs, supported by elite patronage, and highlights the complexity of scholarly activity, suggesting areas for further research.
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The Fictional Thirst and Postmodern Hunger
“Verily, hardship is followed by ease.” -Quran 94:6 Fiction is valued for its magnificent ability to portray lived ideologies in metaphorical form. Such portrayals are assessed, positively or negatively, according to how persuasively their metaphors are developed and sustained. Recently, I happened to choose a work that struck me as a generative metaphor. South Korean…
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The World After Gaza: Seeds of Resistance, Hope in Ashes
Pankaj Mishra’s The World After Gaza is a furious, wide-ranging meditation on the afterlives of the Shoah and the moral wreckage of selective remembrance. Moving from Holocaust history to Gaza and global protest, Mishra indicts Western media and political hypocrisy while asking what it means to live in a world that has normalized a hierarchy…
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Sharīʿah in the Modern World: Reviewing Mashal Ayobi’s ‘The Light We Lost’
A Book Review of The Light We Lost: Grappling with Shariah in the Modern World by Mashal Ayobi The aftermath of the catastrophic Bondi shooting, and the start of Zohran Mamdani’s term as Mayor of New York, has put Muslims, terrorism, the Sharīʿah and the like back into the limelight of oriental focus, the favored…
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The Confessional Body and the Colonial Eye: A Review of The Political Psychology of the Veil
Dr. Sahar Ghumkhor’s “The Political Psychology of the Veil” explores the West’s fascination with the Muslim woman’s body, arguing it’s a reflection of Western self-image rather than the subject herself. The book critiques narratives around hijab, advocating for understanding modesty beyond Western frameworks and scrutinizing the implications of visibility and agency in Muslim women’s lives.
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Femonationalism’s Alliance Between Nationalists, Neoliberals, and Feminists
A Book Review of Femonationalism: In the Name of Women’s Rights (2017) by Sara Farris Here is a prosaic grand narrative: the male Muslim migrant is an oppressor, a barbarian for whom all fault and failure of their societies lie; the female Muslim migrant, however, may be redeemable. She is a lovely exception, for she…
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Another India: Rethinking Muslim Politics in Postcolonial India
Pratinav Anil’s book, Another India, challenges the narrative of Nehruvian secularism protecting Muslims in post-1947 India, arguing that it favored silence and marginalization.
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The Women Writing Gaza’s Truth
A book review of Voices of Resistance: Diaries of Genocide, a searing, intimate testimony from four Palestinian women whose everyday worlds, from pregnancy, exams, olive harvests, weddings, are relentlessly invaded by bombs, famine, and displacement, yet remain defiantly human.
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Liquid Identities, Solid Critiques: Review of Zygmunt Bauman’s ‘Culture in a Liquid Modern World’
Zygmunt Bauman’s “Culture in a Liquid Modern World” explores the transition from solid to liquid modernity, reflecting on how cultural practices transform amidst globalization and technological change. Bauman emphasizes the precarious nature of identity, diasporas, and art, advocating for cultural protection that transcends national borders while acknowledging the complexities of modern existence and institutional pressures.
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Post-Liberal Musings of John Gray: A Book Review of The New Leviathans: Thoughts After Liberalism
A Book Review of The New Leviathans: Thoughts After Liberalism by John Gray Borrowing the title from R.G. Collingwood’s classic, The New Leviathan (1942), English Philosopher John Gray structured his work, The New Leviathans: Thoughts After Liberalism, around Thomas Hobbes’ seminal work Leviathan (1651), which laid the foundation of the ‘social contract’ tradition used to justify…