Episodes

  • Steve Tibble, "Assassins and Templars: A Battle in Myth and Blood" (Yale UP, 2025)

    Steve Tibble, "Assassins and Templars: A Battle in Myth and Blood" (Yale UP, 2025)
    Sep 9 2025
    The Assassins and the Templars are two of history’s most legendary groups. One was a Shi’ite religious sect, the other a Christian military order created to defend the Holy Land. Violently opposed, they had vastly different reputations, followings, and ambitions. Yet they developed strikingly similar strategies—and their intertwined stories have, oddly enough, uncanny parallels. In Assassins and Templars: A Battle in Myth and Blood (Yale UP, 2025), Dr. Steve Tibble engagingly traces the history of these two groups from their origins to their ultimate destruction. He shows how, outnumbered and surrounded, they survived only by perfecting “the promise of death,” either in the form of a Templar charge or an Assassin’s dagger. Death, for themselves or their enemies, was at the core of these extraordinary organisations. Their fanaticism changed the medieval world—and, even up to the present day, in video games and countless conspiracy theories, they have become endlessly conjoined in myth and memory. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/islamic-studies
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    56 mins
  • Localisation of Islamic Arts in Malaysia

    Localisation of Islamic Arts in Malaysia
    Sep 8 2025
    The Malay world boasts a wealth of diverse cultures. The arrival of Islam in the Malay world during the 12th to 13th centuries permanently transformed the aesthetic landscape, and even European colonisation could not stem this change. In this episode of the Nordic Asia Podcast, Prof. Julie Yu-Wen Chen from the University of Helsinki talks to Dr. Dzul Afiq bin Zakaria and Dr. Wahyuni Masyidah Binti Md Isa from the Faculty of Creative Arts, University of Malaya about the localisation of Islamic arts in Malaysia. They illuminate the core of Islamic arts, which view art as a reflection of their faith. In Islam, there is no fundamental distinction between spiritual and secular art, enabling the qualities of Islamic architecture and arts to rise above mere aesthetics and utility. Dr. Dzul Afiq bin Zakaria, a distinguished scholar and artist, possesses artwork that can be shared with our audience to elucidate the relationship between culture, philosophy, and the arts within the Malay world. Dr. Wahyuni Masyidah Binti Md Isa’s research employs Motion Capture technology to chart and conserve Islamic art. For example, Senaman Melayu Tua is a therapeutic exercise rooted in Malay culture. This exercise harmoniously integrates with both Malay culture and Islam, yielding comprehensive positive effects on the spiritual aspect by fostering inner peace, patience, and self-awareness. Her research utilises technology to visualize the micro-lines embedded within Senaman Melayu Tua. Julie Yu-Wen Chen is Professor of Chinese Studies and Asian studies coordinator at the Department of Cultures at the University of Helsinki (Finland). Chen is one of the Editors of the highly-ranked Journal of Chinese Political Science. Formerly, she was Editor-in-Chief of Asian Ethnicity. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/islamic-studies
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    23 mins
  • Mutaz al-Khatib, "Key Classical Works on Islamic Ethics" (Brill, 2024)

    Mutaz al-Khatib, "Key Classical Works on Islamic Ethics" (Brill, 2024)
    Sep 2 2025
    In this episode of Unlocking Academia, host Raja Aderdor speaks with Dr. Mutaz Al-Khatib, Associate Professor at the Research Center for Islamic Legislation and Ethics and Director of the Master’s program in Applied Islamic Ethics at Hamad Bin Khalifa University. Together, they explore Key Classical Works on Islamic Ethics (Brill, 2024), a groundbreaking edited volume that brings together foundational texts spanning hadith, fiqh, kalam, Sufism, and Islamic medicine. Dr. Al-Khatib traces the intellectual lineage of Islamic ethical thought, highlighting how these texts offer practical guidance for lived moral practice while challenging dominant Greco-centric frameworks in ethical theory. The conversation delves into the interdisciplinary nature of Islamic ethics, its historical evolution, and why understanding ethics as a lived tradition remains vital in contemporary scholarship. Listeners will gain insight into the methods behind compiling and editing classical texts, the thematic threads that connect diverse genres, and the enduring relevance of Islamic ethical thought for scholars, students, and anyone interested in the intersections of religion, law, and philosophy. Lyrical, insightful, and rigorously scholarly, this episode invites audiences to engage with the rich, evolving tradition of Islamic ethics and consider its impact on both historical and modern contexts. We are Clavis Aurea: a dynamic team dedicated to advancing academic publishing and sharing groundbreaking scholarship with scholars, students, and enthusiasts worldwide. Based in the historic publishing hub of Leiden, we eat, sleep, and breathe publishing! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/islamic-studies
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    28 mins
  • Aliyah Khan, "Far From Mecca: Globalizing the Muslim Caribbean" (Rutgers UP, 2020)

    Aliyah Khan, "Far From Mecca: Globalizing the Muslim Caribbean" (Rutgers UP, 2020)
    Aug 31 2025
    Muslims have lived in the Caribbean for centuries. Far From Mecca: Globalizing the Muslim Caribbean (Rutgers University Press, 2020) examines the archive of autobiography, literature, music and public celebrations in Guyana and Trinidad, offering an analysis of the ways Islam became integral to the Caribbean, and the ways the Caribbean shaped Islamic practices. Aliyah Khan recovers stories that have been there all along, though they have received little scholarly attention. The interdisciplinary approach takes on big questions about creolization, gender, politics and cultural change, but it does so with precision and attention to detail. Aliyah Khan is an assistant professor of English and Afroamerican and African studies at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/islamic-studies
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    45 mins
  • Islam, Society, and Politics in Indonesia: An Interview with Robert Hefner

    Islam, Society, and Politics in Indonesia: An Interview with Robert Hefner
    Aug 29 2025
    Today’s episode focuses on the intersection of Islam, society, and politics in Indonesia, the world’s single-largest majority Muslim country and the world’s third biggest democracy. Indonesian Islam is notable for its diversity, its associational strength, and its prominent role in both the transition from authoritarian rule to democracy in the late 1990s and in democratic politics in the country since that time. To discuss this huge, complicated topic, Dialogues on Southeast Asia turns to Professor Robert Hefner, Professor of Anthropology and Professor of Global Studies at Boston University. Professor Hefner is the author of four major studies of Islam in Indonesia: Hindu Javanese: Tengger Tradition and Islam (Princeton University Press, 1985), The Political Economy of Mountain Java: An Interpretive History (University of California Press, 1990), Civil Islam: Muslims and Democratization in Indonesia (Princeton University Press, 2000), and, most recently, Islam and Citizenship in Indonesia: Democracy and the Quest for an Inclusive Public Ethics (Routledge, 2024). He is also the author of a long list of journal articles and book chapters and the editor or co-editor of no less than fifteen edited or co-edited volumes, many of which serve as foundational texts in the comparative study of religion and of Islam in particular. A towering figure in the study of Islam in Indonesia and in the comparative study of religion more broadly. Robert Hefner’s work spans the disciplines of anthropology, sociology, and political science to cover the intersection and interplay of religion, society, and politics in Indonesia and beyond. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/islamic-studies
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    1 hr and 8 mins
  • Russell T. McCutcheon, "Religion and the Domestication of Dissent: Or, How to Live in a Less Than Perfect Nation" (Routledge, 2025)

    Russell T. McCutcheon, "Religion and the Domestication of Dissent: Or, How to Live in a Less Than Perfect Nation" (Routledge, 2025)
    Aug 28 2025
    In its first edition, this book focused on the representations of Islam that circulated in the wake of the 9/11 attacks – representations that scholars, pundits, and politicians alike used either to essentialize and demonize it or, instead, to isolate specific aspects as apolitical and thus tolerable faith. This little book’s larger thesis therefore argued for how the classifications that we routinely use to identify and thereby negotiate our social worlds – notably such categories as “religion” or “faith” – are explicitly political. The new edition of Religion and the Domestication of Dissent: Or, How to Live in a Less Than Perfect Nation (Routledge, 2025), which updates the first and adds a new closing chapter, continues to be relevant today – a time when assertions concerning supposedly authentic and homogenous identities (whether shared by “us” or “them”) continue to animate a variety of public debates where the stakes remain high. Thinking back on how Islam was often portrayed in scholarship and popular media in western Europe and North America offers lessons for how debates today unfold on such topics as Christian nationalism – a designation now prominent among pundits intent on identifying the proper and improper ways in which religion intersects with modern political life. But it is this very distinction (between religion and politics) that ought to be attracting our attention, if we are interested not in which way of being religious is right or reasonable but, instead, in determining why some social groups are known as religious in the first place. Seeing the latter question as linked to studying how socially formative categories function in liberal democracies, Religion and the Domestication of Dissent offers an anthropology of the present, when the longstanding mechanisms of liberal governance seem to be under threat. Russell T. McCutcheon is University Research Professor and, for 18 years, was the Chair of the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Alabama, USA. His publications include a variety of works on the history of the field, the everyday effects of the category “religion,” along with a number of practical resources for scholars, teachers, and students. This episode’s host, Jacob Barrett, is currently a PhD candidate in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in the Religion and Culture track. For more information, visit his website thereluctantamericanist.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/islamic-studies
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    1 hr and 8 mins
  • Omid Safi, “Radical Love: Teachings from the Islamic Mystical Tradition” (Yale UP, 2018)

    Omid Safi, “Radical Love: Teachings from the Islamic Mystical Tradition” (Yale UP, 2018)
    Aug 24 2025
    It's often touted that Rumi is one of the best-selling poets in the United States. That may be the case but popular renderings of the writings of this 13th-century Muslim have largely detached him from the Islamic tradition, and specifically Sufi mysticism. In Radical Love: Teachings from the Islamic Mystical Tradition (Yale University Press, 2018), Omid Safi, Professor of Islamic Studies at Duke University, places Jalal al-Din alongside luminaries within the rich archive of Islamic Sufi poetry. In this anthology of newly translated poetry Safi focuses on love, especially ‘ishq/eshq, what he renders as “radical love.” The volume organizes translations of Qur’an and Hadith, Sufi mystics and poets into four thematic sections: God of Love, Path of Love, Lover & Beloved, and Beloved Community. Radical Love does an excellent job of introducing readers to key ideas from Islamic mysticism that are rooted in first hand knowledge of Arabic and Persian texts. This book is valuable to both the scholar and the student because of Safi’s informed nuance in both the careful selection of source passages and the subtle lyricism of his translations. In our conversation we discussed the translation of Sufi poetry in English, strategies to translation work, love in the Islamic tradition, the reception of Rumi, Ahmed Ghazali’s first book in Persian on love, Qawwali singers, contemporary sheikhs, and several key Sufis authors. Kristian Petersen is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy & Religious Studies at Old Dominion University. He is the author of Interpreting Islam in China: Pilgrimage, Scripture, and Language in the Han Kitab (Oxford University Press, 2017). He is currently working on a monograph entitled The Cinematic Lives of Muslims, and is the editor of the forthcoming volumes Muslims in the Movies: A Global Anthology (ILEX Foundation) and New Approaches to Islam in Film (Routledge). You can find out more about his work on his website, follow him on Twitter @BabaKristian, or email him at kpeterse@odu.edu. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/islamic-studies
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    1 hr and 18 mins
  • David Commins, "Saudi Arabia: A Modern History" (Yale UP, 2025)

    David Commins, "Saudi Arabia: A Modern History" (Yale UP, 2025)
    Aug 20 2025
    A major new history of Saudi Arabia, from its eighteenth-century origins to the present day Saudi Arabia is one of the wealthiest countries in the world, a major player on the international stage and the site of Islam’s two holiest cities. It is also one of the world’s only absolute monarchies. How did Saudi Arabia get to where it is today? In Saudi Arabia: A Modern History (Yale UP, 2025), David Commins narrates the full history of Saudi Arabia from oasis emirate to present-day attempts to leap to a post-petroleum economy. Moving through the ages, Commins traces how the Saud dynasty’s reliance on sectarianism, foreign expertise, and petroleum to stabilize power has unintentionally spawned secular and religious movements seeking accountability and justice. He incorporates the experiences of activists, women, religious minorities, Bedouin, and expatriate workers as the country transformed from subsistence agrarian life to urban consumer society. This is a perceptive portrait of Saudi Arabia’s complex and evolving story—and a country that is all too easily misunderstood. David Commins is the Benjamin Rush Chair in the Liberal Arts and Sciences and professor of history at Dickinson College. He is the author of Islam in Saudi Arabia, The Gulf States, and The Wahhabi Mission and Saudi Arabia. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/islamic-studies
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    29 mins