New Books in Islamic Studies

Jamal J. Elias' new book After Rumi: The Mevlevis & Their World (Harvard UP, 2025) takes us on a historical journey through the development of the Mevlevi community after Jalaluddin Rumi’s passing in 1273. He frames the Mevlevis as an “emotional community” that is anchored in affective engagements with Rumi and his Mas

The Unforgotten Women of the Islamic State (Oxford University Press, 2024) by Dr. Gina Vale explores the governance of the Islamic State (IS) terrorist organization through the lives and words of local Iraqi, Syrian, and Kurdish women. While the roles and activities of foreign (predominantly Western), pro-IS women have

Textual Life: Islam, Africa, and the Fate of the Humanities (Columbia University Press, 2025), is a groundbreaking book that recasts the role of knowledge in the making of a colonial and postcolonial nation. It makes a case for a new literary and intellectual-historical approach to Islam in Africa. The Senegalese Musli

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 the

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 Universi

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 Et