Critical Muslim Studies

Summer Programme 2025

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Sovereignty in the Realm of the Salvific

The concept of the Caliphate and the subsequent possibilities it offers in the realm of political, epistemological, pietistic and decolonial iterations appears immense and, in some ways, revolutionary. Revolutionary in that its applicability to a multitude of social, religious and political configurations appears endless and profoundly connected to almost primordial conceptions of the Islamicate that were first established in the prophetic community and that continue to dispute and contest Eurocentric formations of the nation state throughout the medieval and early modern period.

Islam and Sovereignty

The Ottoman caliphate, conversely, was not wholly free of Western influences, or elements that accorded with Enlightenment notions of sovereignty. It was and was not a European empire in its own right, ruling much of what is now remembered as Europe, the caliphal capital marking a once-center, once-boundary of that space.

Searching in the Rubbles for Jewish-Muslim Worlds

The state of Israel as a “Jewish” supremacist and belligerent settler-colonial regime embodies the tragic genocidal logic of modernity/coloniality. It tells the story of the destruction of Jewish lives in Europe and SWANA, the Palestinian ongoing Nakba, and the destruction of Jewish-Muslim and Jewish-Arab worlds. In addition to (and constitutive of) a shift from Islamicate to orientalist geopolitics and euro-centricity, the abolition of the caliphate happened at a moment that signalled and anticipated these multiple destructions.

South-South Dialogues

This network, which spans in the contemporary world from the Bandung Conference to Global Palestine, seeks to delink from the Western-imposed imaginaries of the rest of the world. Yet, one lingering question remains: While the Western imaginaries of the Global South should be debunked, what should we do with the images that decolonial projects have of each other in the process of reclaiming their political subjectivity? Are these images a source of potential solidarity or a limitation for South-South dialogues? This is the question I aim to address in this blog.

The Enduring Caliphate

In this post, Professor Mona Hassan clarifies how the vision of an Islamic caliphate remarkably endures – even after the abolition of the Ottoman caliphate one hundred years ago – and how it remains deeply misunderstood.

Before the Caliphate

In the words of the late, great, Shuhada Sadaqat, known in the earlier part of her life before her reversion to Islam as Sinéad O’Connor: “Ok, I want to talk about Ireland. Specifically I want to talk about the famine.” An odd place, perhaps, to begin an exploration of the caliphate as a tool for reorienting hegemonic narratives of ancient history, but bear with me. A fact about world history that is, it seems, frequently rediscovered, but never truly sedimented is that the Ottoman Empire came to Ireland’s aid when between 1845 and 1852 its colonial occupier Britain had imposed upon it a famine that killed around a million people

Islam and Sovereignty

The Ottoman caliphate, conversely, was not wholly free of Western influences, or elements that accorded with Enlightenment notions of sovereignty. It was and was not a European empire in its own right, ruling much of what is now remembered as Europe, the caliphal capital marking a once-center, once-boundary of that space.

Searching in the Rubbles for Jewish-Muslim Worlds

The state of Israel as a “Jewish” supremacist and belligerent settler-colonial regime embodies the tragic genocidal logic of modernity/coloniality. It tells the story of the destruction of Jewish lives in Europe and SWANA, the Palestinian ongoing Nakba, and the destruction of Jewish-Muslim and Jewish-Arab worlds. In addition to (and constitutive of) a shift from Islamicate to orientalist geopolitics and euro-centricity, the abolition of the caliphate happened at a moment that signalled and anticipated these multiple destructions.

ReOrientations:

The Blog of the Critical Muslim Studies Project

 

Welcome to ReOrientations, the blog of the Critical Muslim Studies project. 

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Decolonisations and Emancipations

Critical Muslim Studies | SUMMER PROGRAMME

 

Call for Applications

Critical Muslim Studies investigates the genealogies and complexities of Muslimness its cognates and variants – in relation to decolonial impulses and their limits in a world scarred by genocide and authoritarian populism.

Deadline for Applications: 14th February 2025

APPLY HERE

ReOrienting Resistance

4th International Critical Muslim Studies Conference

 

Call for Papers

The fourth Critical Muslim Studies conference invites scholars, researchers and thinkers to engage with the theme of  ReOrienting Resistance.

Deadline for Submissions: 7th February 2025

EXPLORE HERE

The Struggle for Pakistan

ReOrient on Pakistan - Blogs + Podcasts
EXPLORE HERE

About Us

This website is a platform for bringing together and putting forward the different elements of Critical Muslim Studies as a field of thought and study. Critical Muslim Studies is not confined to a single discipline, or scholarly work, or methodological approach. It is an epistemological orientation that starts from the idea that the hierarchy between the west and the non-west is no longer assured…

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