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W r i t i n g s
"What is Political about
Political Islam?"
Book Blurb, Fordham University Press
In Political Theology on Edge, the discourse of political theology is seen as situated on an edge, that is, on the edge of a world that is grappling with global warming, a brutal form of neoliberal capitalism, protests against racism and police brutality, and the COVID-19 pandemic. This edge is also a form of eschatology that forces us to imagine new ways of being religious and political in our cohabitation of a fragile and shared planet. Each of the essays in this volume attends to how climate change and our ecological crises intersect and interact with more traditional themes of political theology.
While the tradition of political theology is often associated with philosophical responses to the work of Carl Schmitt—and the critical attempts to disengage religion from his right-wing politics—the contributors to this volume are informed by Schmitt but not limited to his perspectives. They engage and transform political theology from the standpoint of climate change, the politics of race, and non-Christian political theologies including Islam and Sikhism. Important themes include the Anthropocene, Ecology, Capitalism, Sovereignty, Black Lives Matter, Affect Theory, Continental Philosophy, Destruction, and Suicide. This book includes world-renowned scholars and emerging voices that together open up the tradition of political theology to new ideas and new ways of thinking.
"Lovers in the Age of the Beloveds: Classical Ottoman Divan Literature and the Dialectical Tradition (Ādāb al-Baḥth)"
Book Blurb, I.B. Tauris
In the long literary history of the Middle East, the notion of 'the beloved' has been a central trope in both the poetry and prose of the region. This book explores the concept of the beloved in a cross-cultural and interdisciplinary manner, revealing how shared ideas on the subject supersede geographical and temporal boundaries, and ideas of nationhood. The book considers the beloved in its classical, modern and postmodern manifestations, taking into account the different sexual orientations and forms of desire expressed. From the pre-Islamic 'Udhri (romantic unrequited love), to the erotic same-sex love in thirteenth century poetry and prose, the divine Sufi reflections on the topic, and post-revolutionary love encounters in Iran, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, The Beloved in Middle Eastern Literatures connects the affective and cultural with the political and the obscene. In focusing on the diverse manifestations of love and tropes of the lover/beloved binary, this book is unique in foregrounding what is often regarded as a 'taboo subject' in the region.
The multi-faceted outlook reveals the variety of philological, philosophical, poetic and literary forms that treat this significant motif.
… I see my list on political theology functioning like Wittgenstein’s ladder metaphor in his Tractatus. Once graduate students read and grasp these important texts, they should “throw away the ladder”, so to speak, and deconstruct all they have learned about political theology to illuminate contemporary problems on their own. Once they reach the top, they can throw away the ladder.