Mizan Series – serie

The End of Middle East History and Other Conjectures is an unapologetic collection of imaginative essays from thought-provoking Middle East scholar Richard W. Bulliet. Not your ordinary think pieces, this volume collects for the first time Bulliet’s Big Bang–Big Crunch theory of Islamic history and his illuminating conception of the “Muslim South.” Speculations range from future political events to counterfactual histories of how reversal of the outcome of a 1529 battle might have profoundly altered history. After fifty years of posing and answering daring historical questions, Bulliet happily tackles an array of conjectures on subjects as diverse as the origin of civilization, the end of Middle East history, and future interpretations of the twentieth century.

The twenty-first century has been a volatile period for American Muslims. Anti-Muslim hate crimes peaked after September 11, 2001, then increased again dramatically in parallel with the candidacy and presidency of Donald Trump. Yet American Muslims now have unprecedented avenues of influence in US politics. Muslims and US Politics Today explores the various representations of Muslims in American political and civic life, the myriad ways American Muslims are affected by politics, and how American Muslims are engaging political life as individuals and communities.This integrative volume reaches back to presidential elections after 9/11 (Edward E. Curtis IV), further back to Iranian immigrants after the Iranian Revolution (Mohsen Mostafavi Mobasher), and back even to fundamentals of religious freedom in the United States (Kambiz GhaneaBassiri; Mucahit Bilici). Aspects of anti-Muslim politics and marginalization, as well as mobilization and activism, are covered in essays by Salah D. Hassan, Evelyn Alsultany, Juliane Hammer, Alisa Perkins, and Sally Howell. In a final section on rethinking Muslim politics, Donna Auston and Sylvia Chan-Malik dialogue on Black American Islam and Junaid Rana looks broadly to a global Muslim left. In this critically-timed volume, editor Mohammad Hassan Khalil has drawn together leading scholars to provide a deep look at the rich political history and future of American Muslims.

The study of Islam has historically been approached in two different ways: apologetical and polemical. The former focuses on the preservation and propagation of religious teachings, and the latter on the attempt to undermine the tradition. The dialectic between these two approaches continued into the Enlightenment, and the tension between them still exists today. What is new in the modern period, however, is the introduction of a third approach, the academic one, which ostensibly examines the tradition in diverse historical, religious, legal, intellectual, and philosophical contexts. Classical Islamic subjects (e.g., Qur’ān, ḥadīth, fiqh, tafsīr) are now studied using a combination of the apologetical, the polemical, and the academic approaches. Depending upon the historical period and the institutional context, these classical topics have been accepted (apologetical), have had their truth claims undermined (polemical), or have simply been taken for granted (academic).This volume, comprising chapters by leading experts, deconstructs the ways in which classical Muslim scholarship has structured (and, indeed, continues to structure) the modern study of Islam. It explores how classical subjects have been approached traditionally, theologically, and secularly, in addition to examining some of the tensions inherent in these approaches.

Muslims in the Movies provides a series of essays that explore the portrayal and reception of Muslims in Euro-American film, transnational productions, and global national cinemas. The volume brings together a group of internationally recognized experts to introduce Muslims in the films of Europe, North America, Australia, Iran, Egypt, North Africa, Saudi Arabia, Nigeria, India, Indonesia, and the Philippines. The interdisciplinary collection explores issues of identity, cultural production, and representation through the depiction of Muslims on screen and how audiences respond to these images. Together, the essays operate as an introduction to the subject of Muslims and film for new readers while also serving as new works of critical analysis for scholars of cinema.

Iran Amplified: One Hundred Years of Music and Society, the first edited volume on music in modern Iran, presents a cross-genre collection of compelling scholarship, musician narratives, and primary sources. This groundbreaking volume, seizing on this burgeoning academic field, offers historiography and critical examination of music’s significant role in social and political mediation in Iran spanning the twentieth century. It also investigates central analytical vectors such as Islam, gender, media technology, alterity, transnational flows, and diasporic communities. As demonstrated at critical moments in Iranian history—from the Constitutional Revolution of 1906–1911 to 1960s and 1970s Third-Worldist activism, the 1979 Revolution, the Iran-Iraq War, the 2009 Green Movement, the 2022 Woman, Life, Freedom Uprising and beyond—music has played a pivotal role in mediating and expressing social and political discourses. Music has also been significant in coalescing sentiments and subjectivities throughout seemingly quieter periods of nation-building during the Pahlavi era, the post-WWII period of Great Power machinations, the cosmopolitan 1970s era, and the post-war reconstruction period of the 1990s. This timely volume, compiled by two leading readers of Iranian culture, finally affords music its important place in the scholarship of modern Iran.

I Am the Wounded Victim of a Suicide Bomber presents a selection of poems, translated into English and including the Perisan texts, by Fazel Ahad Ahadi, a scholar and poet driven from his home in Afghanistan by the political and social disruptions that have beset his country since the mid-twentieth century. Drawing heavily on these years of warfare and domination by outsiders and by extremists, this collection highlights the struggles of Afghans to keep alive their individual and collective identities along with the loneliness and cultural dislocation of exile—conditions experienced by too many the world over. While Ahadi’s poems can be joyful and hopeful, most evoke the pain of separation and isolation mixed with the determination to endure, persist, and resist.