Podcasts about religious difference

Between Muslims Religious Difference in Iraqi Kurdistan (Stanford UP, 2020) by J. Andrew Bush asks what it means to be Muslim, yet not pious, in Iraqi Kurdistan. Though Islam is often represented in terms of either daily devotion, such as prayer and fasting, or abandonment of faith, there are many who turn away from tradition without departing from Islam. J. Andrew Bush offers us a new way to understand religious difference in Islam, one that invites questions about divine texts and rejects easy answers about political or sectarian identities.  Exploring the lives of irreligious Muslims, Bush highlights the paradoxes of their ethical orientation. While profoundly averse to many aspects of Islamic traditions, irreligious Muslims nonetheless harbor attractions to other aspects--such as Sufi poetry. Exploring this complex weave of attraction and aversion, the book provides intimate portraits of irreligious Kurdish Muslims in everyday life and the historical conditions that have allowed such paradoxical religious orientations to appear very ordinary in contemporary Kurdistan.  Whether readers approach the book as Muslims with a commitment to Islam, or as Muslims with ambivalence to Islam, or as non-Muslims who bear their own forms of certainty or ambivalence about Islam, the book will open to the door to thinking about the relationship between commitment and ambivalence in Islamic traditions. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

Between Muslims Religious Difference in Iraqi Kurdistan (Stanford UP, 2020) by J. Andrew Bush asks what it means to be Muslim, yet not pious, in Iraqi Kurdistan. Though Islam is often represented in terms of either daily devotion, such as prayer and fasting, or abandonment of faith, there are many who turn away from tradition without departing from Islam. J. Andrew Bush offers us a new way to understand religious difference in Islam, one that invites questions about divine texts and rejects easy answers about political or sectarian identities.  Exploring the lives of irreligious Muslims, Bush highlights the paradoxes of their ethical orientation. While profoundly averse to many aspects of Islamic traditions, irreligious Muslims nonetheless harbor attractions to other aspects--such as Sufi poetry. Exploring this complex weave of attraction and aversion, the book provides intimate portraits of irreligious Kurdish Muslims in everyday life and the historical conditions that have allowed such paradoxical religious orientations to appear very ordinary in contemporary Kurdistan.  Whether readers approach the book as Muslims with a commitment to Islam, or as Muslims with ambivalence to Islam, or as non-Muslims who bear their own forms of certainty or ambivalence about Islam, the book will open to the door to thinking about the relationship between commitment and ambivalence in Islamic traditions. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/anthropology

Between Muslims Religious Difference in Iraqi Kurdistan (Stanford UP, 2020) by J. Andrew Bush asks what it means to be Muslim, yet not pious, in Iraqi Kurdistan. Though Islam is often represented in terms of either daily devotion, such as prayer and fasting, or abandonment of faith, there are many who turn away from tradition without departing from Islam. J. Andrew Bush offers us a new way to understand religious difference in Islam, one that invites questions about divine texts and rejects easy answers about political or sectarian identities.  Exploring the lives of irreligious Muslims, Bush highlights the paradoxes of their ethical orientation. While profoundly averse to many aspects of Islamic traditions, irreligious Muslims nonetheless harbor attractions to other aspects--such as Sufi poetry. Exploring this complex weave of attraction and aversion, the book provides intimate portraits of irreligious Kurdish Muslims in everyday life and the historical conditions that have allowed such paradoxical religious orientations to appear very ordinary in contemporary Kurdistan.  Whether readers approach the book as Muslims with a commitment to Islam, or as Muslims with ambivalence to Islam, or as non-Muslims who bear their own forms of certainty or ambivalence about Islam, the book will open to the door to thinking about the relationship between commitment and ambivalence in Islamic traditions. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/central-asian-studies

Between Muslims Religious Difference in Iraqi Kurdistan (Stanford UP, 2020) by J. Andrew Bush asks what it means to be Muslim, yet not pious, in Iraqi Kurdistan. Though Islam is often represented in terms of either daily devotion, such as prayer and fasting, or abandonment of faith, there are many who turn away from tradition without departing from Islam. J. Andrew Bush offers us a new way to understand religious difference in Islam, one that invites questions about divine texts and rejects easy answers about political or sectarian identities.  Exploring the lives of irreligious Muslims, Bush highlights the paradoxes of their ethical orientation. While profoundly averse to many aspects of Islamic traditions, irreligious Muslims nonetheless harbor attractions to other aspects--such as Sufi poetry. Exploring this complex weave of attraction and aversion, the book provides intimate portraits of irreligious Kurdish Muslims in everyday life and the historical conditions that have allowed such paradoxical religious orientations to appear very ordinary in contemporary Kurdistan.  Whether readers approach the book as Muslims with a commitment to Islam, or as Muslims with ambivalence to Islam, or as non-Muslims who bear their own forms of certainty or ambivalence about Islam, the book will open to the door to thinking about the relationship between commitment and ambivalence in Islamic traditions. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

Between Muslims Religious Difference in Iraqi Kurdistan (Stanford UP, 2020) by J. Andrew Bush asks what it means to be Muslim, yet not pious, in Iraqi Kurdistan. Though Islam is often represented in terms of either daily devotion, such as prayer and fasting, or abandonment of faith, there are many who turn away from tradition without departing from Islam. J. Andrew Bush offers us a new way to understand religious difference in Islam, one that invites questions about divine texts and rejects easy answers about political or sectarian identities.  Exploring the lives of irreligious Muslims, Bush highlights the paradoxes of their ethical orientation. While profoundly averse to many aspects of Islamic traditions, irreligious Muslims nonetheless harbor attractions to other aspects--such as Sufi poetry. Exploring this complex weave of attraction and aversion, the book provides intimate portraits of irreligious Kurdish Muslims in everyday life and the historical conditions that have allowed such paradoxical religious orientations to appear very ordinary in contemporary Kurdistan.  Whether readers approach the book as Muslims with a commitment to Islam, or as Muslims with ambivalence to Islam, or as non-Muslims who bear their own forms of certainty or ambivalence about Islam, the book will open to the door to thinking about the relationship between commitment and ambivalence in Islamic traditions. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/middle-eastern-studies

Between Muslims Religious Difference in Iraqi Kurdistan (Stanford UP, 2020) by J. Andrew Bush asks what it means to be Muslim, yet not pious, in Iraqi Kurdistan. Though Islam is often represented in terms of either daily devotion, such as prayer and fasting, or abandonment of faith, there are many who turn away from tradition without departing from Islam. J. Andrew Bush offers us a new way to understand religious difference in Islam, one that invites questions about divine texts and rejects easy answers about political or sectarian identities.  Exploring the lives of irreligious Muslims, Bush highlights the paradoxes of their ethical orientation. While profoundly averse to many aspects of Islamic traditions, irreligious Muslims nonetheless harbor attractions to other aspects--such as Sufi poetry. Exploring this complex weave of attraction and aversion, the book provides intimate portraits of irreligious Kurdish Muslims in everyday life and the historical conditions that have allowed such paradoxical religious orientations to appear very ordinary in contemporary Kurdistan.  Whether readers approach the book as Muslims with a commitment to Islam, or as Muslims with ambivalence to Islam, or as non-Muslims who bear their own forms of certainty or ambivalence about Islam, the book will open to the door to thinking about the relationship between commitment and ambivalence in Islamic traditions. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/islamic-studies

This episode was recorded at the Moroccan-American Commission for Educational and Cultural Exchange (MACECE) in Rabat on September 18, 2019. In this podcast, Emma Snowden, a PhD candidate at the University of Minnesota, discusses how medieval Almohad chronicles understood the role of the caliphate in the Iberian Peninsula. The swift takeover of North Africa and al-Andalus by the Almohads in the twelfth century has been referred to as a “revolution” by some scholars, a view that is often reflected in medieval texts from the caliphate. The Almohads sought to distinguish themselves from the preceding Almoravid dynasty in every respect, waging holy war against all those who opposed them, Muslim and non-Muslim alike. In this podcast, Emma suggests that chroniclers like Ibn Ṣāḥib al-Ṣalāt employed a kind of logic of resurrection, framing the Almohad conquest of al-Andalus as a sequence of corruption, destruction, and ultimate revival. A similar logic of resurrection can be identified in earlier Christian Iberian chronicles that dealt with the role of Maghribis and Muslims in Iberia. Emma considers the two historiographical traditions together, exploring the extent to which they suggest a shared literary-historical imagination in which the mutual ideological problem of competing Muslim and Christian claims to power over the same territory was conceptually resolved by presenting that space as a slate to be wiped clean by individual dynasties. Emma is currently at work on her dissertation, “Bridging the Strait: The Shared History of Iberia and North Africa in Medieval Muslim and Christian Chronicles,” which explores how medieval writers narrated moments when North Africans controlled people and territory in Iberia, and vice versa. She was able to conduct research in Rabat and Tangier with the generous support of a short-term research grant from the American Institute for Maghrib Studies (AIMS). Emma recently published an article titled “Islam as the Source of All Wonders: Arab and Islamic Identity in al-Saraqusṭī’s Maqāmāt al-luzūmiyya” in the spring 2019 issue of La corónica: A Journal of Medieval Hispanic Languages, Literatures, and Cultures. Her article can be found at: https://muse.jhu.edu/article/729894 . Bennison, Amira K. “Almohad Tawḥīd and its Implications for Religious Difference.” Journal of Medieval Iberian Studies 2, no. 2 (June 1, 2010): 195–216. ———. The Almoravid and Almohad Empires. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2016. Buresi, Pascal, and Hicham El Aallaoui. Governing the Empire: Provincial Administration in the Almohad Caliphate (1224-1269). Critical Edition, Translation, and Study of Manuscript 4752 of the Hasaniyya Library in Rabat Containing 77 Taqadim (“appointments”). Translated by Travis Bruce. Boston: Brill, 2013. Fierro, Maribel. “Alfonso X ‘The Wise’: The Last Almohad Caliph?” Medieval Encounters 15, no. 2-4 (2009): 175–98. Fromherz, Allen. “North Africa and the Twelfth-Century Renaissance: Christian Europe and the Almohad Islamic Empire.” Islam and Christian–Muslim Relations 20, no. 1 (2009): 43–59. ———. The Almohads: The Rise of an Islamic Empire. New York: I.B. Tauris, 2010. Jones, Linda G. “The Preaching of the Almohads: Loyalty and Resistance across the Strait of Gibraltar.” Medieval Encounters 19, no. 1–2 (2013): 71–101. Wolf, Kenneth Baxter, trans. Conquerors and Chroniclers of Early Medieval Spain. 2nd ed. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1999.

Rabbi David Levinsky is Saidye Bromfman Rabbinical Chair at Temple Har Shalom in Park City, Utah. Nate Bagley is a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints in Utah and host of the Loveumentary podcast, helping people create strong, lasting relationships. Both David and Nate are part of the OneAmerica movement – which seeks to build bridges and solve problems across the socially salient differences that divide us. They focus on bridging divides across religious difference.

An Author-Meets-Critics Roundtable Session discussing Saba Mahmood’s recently published book, "Religious Difference in a Secular Age: A Minority Report" (Princeton University Press, 2016). Bringing together both senior and junior scholars invested in questions of secularism and secularity from varied disciplinary and thematic perspectives including American religious history, the study of Sikhism, Middle East politics, and modern Arabic literature, this panel will wrestle with the key themes, arguments, and conceptual interventions of this important book. It will also provide an opportunity to explore and engage new questions connected to modern secular governance, state sovereignty, minority rights, religious liberty, and the intersection of secularism, sexuality, and the family. Panelists: - SherAli Tareen, Franklin and Marshall College, presiding - Nermeen Mouftah, Northwestern University - Arvind Mandair, University of Michigan - Mona Oraby, Indiana University - John Modern, Franklin and Marshall College Responding: Saba Mahmood, University of California, Berkeley

In this episode, we’re going to explore a term. You’ve undoubtedly heard of its components but may not have put them together. What is meant by the term “practical spirituality?” If we’re confused trying to differentiate between religion and spirituality, adding practicality to something that is oftentimes illogical can put us into a head spin. Let’s try to make some sense out of it . . . shall we? Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:27 In the news, this was the economic times of India to put things in context, I found an article that talks about spirituality. 03:16 Aware Appreciation. 05:33 Have you heard of the term “practical spirituality?” 05:52 Let’s start by defining practical spirituality. That is not so easy to do since there is no specific term, actually. 07:15 Practical spirituality, from my perspective, means that we are going to take these spiritual practices and apply them in our lives. They are going to make our lives better. 13:11 As I was experiencing the idea of the show . . . practically spiritual came to me. It was related to the movie, “Mary Poppins.” 14:32 How can I use awareness to improve my performance while playing?

It is commonly thought that violence, injustice, and discrimination against religious minorities, especially in the Middle East, are a product of religious fundamentalism and myopia. Concomitantly, it is often argued, that more of secularism and less of religion represents the solution to this problem. In her stunning new book Religious Difference in a Secular Age: A Minority Report (Princeton University Press, 2015), Saba Mahmood, Professor of Anthropology at the University of California at Berkeley, brings such a celebratory view of secularism into fatal doubt. Through a careful and brilliant analysis, Mahmood convincingly shows that far from a solution to the problem of interreligious strife, political secularism and modern secular governance are in fact intimately entwined to the exacerbation of religious tensions in the Middle East. Focusing on Egypt and the experience of Egyptian Copts and Bahais, Mahmood explores multiple conceptual and discursive registers to highlight the paradoxical qualities of political secularism, arguing that majority/minority conflict in Egypt is less a reflection of the failure of secularism and more a product of secular discourses and politics, both within and outside the country. In our conversation, we touched on the salient features of this book such as the concept of political secularism and its applicability to a context such as Egypt, the genealogy of minority rights and religious liberty in the Middle East, discourses of minority rights and citizenship in relation to the Egyptian Copts, the discourse of public order and the regulation of Bahai religious identity and difference in Egypt, secularism, family law, and sexuality and the category of secularity and particular understandings of time, history, and scripture brought into view by the controversy generated in Egypt by the novel Azazeel. This theoretically rigorous book is also wonderfully written, making it particularly suitable for graduate and undergraduate courses on Islam, the Middle East, secularism, religion and politics, gender and sexuality, and theories and methods in religion. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It is commonly thought that violence, injustice, and discrimination against religious minorities, especially in the Middle East, are a product of religious fundamentalism and myopia. Concomitantly, it is often argued, that more of secularism and less of religion represents the solution to this problem. In her stunning new book Religious...

It is commonly thought that violence, injustice, and discrimination against religious minorities, especially in the Middle East, are a product of religious fundamentalism and myopia. Concomitantly, it is often argued, that more of secularism and less of religion represents the solution to this problem. In her stunning new book Religious Difference in a Secular Age: A Minority Report (Princeton University Press, 2015), Saba Mahmood, Professor of Anthropology at the University of California at Berkeley, brings such a celebratory view of secularism into fatal doubt. Through a careful and brilliant analysis, Mahmood convincingly shows that far from a solution to the problem of interreligious strife, political secularism and modern secular governance are in fact intimately entwined to the exacerbation of religious tensions in the Middle East. Focusing on Egypt and the experience of Egyptian Copts and Bahais, Mahmood explores multiple conceptual and discursive registers to highlight the paradoxical qualities of political secularism, arguing that majority/minority conflict in Egypt is less a reflection of the failure of secularism and more a product of secular discourses and politics, both within and outside the country. In our conversation, we touched on the salient features of this book such as the concept of political secularism and its applicability to a context such as Egypt, the genealogy of minority rights and religious liberty in the Middle East, discourses of minority rights and citizenship in relation to the Egyptian Copts, the discourse of public order and the regulation of Bahai religious identity and difference in Egypt, secularism, family law, and sexuality and the category of secularity and particular understandings of time, history, and scripture brought into view by the controversy generated in Egypt by the novel Azazeel. This theoretically rigorous book is also wonderfully written, making it particularly suitable for graduate and undergraduate courses on Islam, the Middle East, secularism, religion and politics, gender and sexuality, and theories and methods in religion. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It is commonly thought that violence, injustice, and discrimination against religious minorities, especially in the Middle East, are a product of religious fundamentalism and myopia. Concomitantly, it is often argued, that more of secularism and less of religion represents the solution to this problem. In her stunning new book Religious Difference in a Secular Age: A Minority Report (Princeton University Press, 2015), Saba Mahmood, Professor of Anthropology at the University of California at Berkeley, brings such a celebratory view of secularism into fatal doubt. Through a careful and brilliant analysis, Mahmood convincingly shows that far from a solution to the problem of interreligious strife, political secularism and modern secular governance are in fact intimately entwined to the exacerbation of religious tensions in the Middle East. Focusing on Egypt and the experience of Egyptian Copts and Bahais, Mahmood explores multiple conceptual and discursive registers to highlight the paradoxical qualities of political secularism, arguing that majority/minority conflict in Egypt is less a reflection of the failure of secularism and more a product of secular discourses and politics, both within and outside the country. In our conversation, we touched on the salient features of this book such as the concept of political secularism and its applicability to a context such as Egypt, the genealogy of minority rights and religious liberty in the Middle East, discourses of minority rights and citizenship in relation to the Egyptian Copts, the discourse of public order and the regulation of Bahai religious identity and difference in Egypt, secularism, family law, and sexuality and the category of secularity and particular understandings of time, history, and scripture brought into view by the controversy generated in Egypt by the novel Azazeel. This theoretically rigorous book is also wonderfully written, making it particularly suitable for graduate and undergraduate courses on Islam, the Middle East, secularism, religion and politics, gender and sexuality, and theories and methods in religion. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It is commonly thought that violence, injustice, and discrimination against religious minorities, especially in the Middle East, are a product of religious fundamentalism and myopia. Concomitantly, it is often argued, that more of secularism and less of religion represents the solution to this problem. In her stunning new book Religious Difference in a Secular Age: A Minority Report (Princeton University Press, 2015), Saba Mahmood, Professor of Anthropology at the University of California at Berkeley, brings such a celebratory view of secularism into fatal doubt. Through a careful and brilliant analysis, Mahmood convincingly shows that far from a solution to the problem of interreligious strife, political secularism and modern secular governance are in fact intimately entwined to the exacerbation of religious tensions in the Middle East. Focusing on Egypt and the experience of Egyptian Copts and Bahais, Mahmood explores multiple conceptual and discursive registers to highlight the paradoxical qualities of political secularism, arguing that majority/minority conflict in Egypt is less a reflection of the failure of secularism and more a product of secular discourses and politics, both within and outside the country. In our conversation, we touched on the salient features of this book such as the concept of political secularism and its applicability to a context such as Egypt, the genealogy of minority rights and religious liberty in the Middle East, discourses of minority rights and citizenship in relation to the Egyptian Copts, the discourse of public order and the regulation of Bahai religious identity and difference in Egypt, secularism, family law, and sexuality and the category of secularity and particular understandings of time, history, and scripture brought into view by the controversy generated in Egypt by the novel Azazeel. This theoretically rigorous book is also wonderfully written, making it particularly suitable for graduate and undergraduate courses on Islam, the Middle East, secularism, religion and politics, gender and sexuality, and theories and methods in religion. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It is commonly thought that violence, injustice, and discrimination against religious minorities, especially in the Middle East, are a product of religious fundamentalism and myopia. Concomitantly, it is often argued, that more of secularism and less of religion represents the solution to this problem. In her stunning new book Religious Difference in a Secular Age: A Minority Report (Princeton University Press, 2015), Saba Mahmood, Professor of Anthropology at the University of California at Berkeley, brings such a celebratory view of secularism into fatal doubt. Through a careful and brilliant analysis, Mahmood convincingly shows that far from a solution to the problem of interreligious strife, political secularism and modern secular governance are in fact intimately entwined to the exacerbation of religious tensions in the Middle East. Focusing on Egypt and the experience of Egyptian Copts and Bahais, Mahmood explores multiple conceptual and discursive registers to highlight the paradoxical qualities of political secularism, arguing that majority/minority conflict in Egypt is less a reflection of the failure of secularism and more a product of secular discourses and politics, both within and outside the country. In our conversation, we touched on the salient features of this book such as the concept of political secularism and its applicability to a context such as Egypt, the genealogy of minority rights and religious liberty in the Middle East, discourses of minority rights and citizenship in relation to the Egyptian Copts, the discourse of public order and the regulation of Bahai religious identity and difference in Egypt, secularism, family law, and sexuality and the category of secularity and particular understandings of time, history, and scripture brought into view by the controversy generated in Egypt by the novel Azazeel. This theoretically rigorous book is also wonderfully written, making it particularly suitable for graduate and undergraduate courses on Islam, the Middle East, secularism, religion and politics, gender and sexuality, and theories and methods in religion. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It is commonly thought that violence, injustice, and discrimination against religious minorities, especially in the Middle East, are a product of religious fundamentalism and myopia. Concomitantly, it is often argued, that more of secularism and less of religion represents the solution to this problem. In her stunning new book Religious Difference in a Secular Age: A Minority Report (Princeton University Press, 2015), Saba Mahmood, Professor of Anthropology at the University of California at Berkeley, brings such a celebratory view of secularism into fatal doubt. Through a careful and brilliant analysis, Mahmood convincingly shows that far from a solution to the problem of interreligious strife, political secularism and modern secular governance are in fact intimately entwined to the exacerbation of religious tensions in the Middle East. Focusing on Egypt and the experience of Egyptian Copts and Bahais, Mahmood explores multiple conceptual and discursive registers to highlight the paradoxical qualities of political secularism, arguing that majority/minority conflict in Egypt is less a reflection of the failure of secularism and more a product of secular discourses and politics, both within and outside the country. In our conversation, we touched on the salient features of this book such as the concept of political secularism and its applicability to a context such as Egypt, the genealogy of minority rights and religious liberty in the Middle East, discourses of minority rights and citizenship in relation to the Egyptian Copts, the discourse of public order and the regulation of Bahai religious identity and difference in Egypt, secularism, family law, and sexuality and the category of secularity and particular understandings of time, history, and scripture brought into view by the controversy generated in Egypt by the novel Azazeel. This theoretically rigorous book is also wonderfully written, making it particularly suitable for graduate and undergraduate courses on Islam, the Middle East, secularism, religion and politics, gender and sexuality, and theories and methods in religion. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Legal philosopher Martha Nussbaum gave the 2013 Dahrendorf Lecture, exploring how to live with religious diversity.

Presentations from a two-day international and interdisciplinary conference on the theme of reducing religious conflict. Organised by the SRC Project, Faculty of Philosophy, University of Oxford (June 2012). In June 2012, the Science and Religious Conflict Project team in the Faculty of Philosophy at Oxford University hosted a two-day international and interdisciplinary conference on the theme of reducing religious conflict. Conflicts between different religious groups and between religious groups, governments and broader society are endemic to modern life and have been a feature of human existence for thousands of years. What can be done to reduce the rate of occurrence and the severity of such conflicts? In this conference leading international experts from different disciplines take up the theme of reducing religious conflict.