Koshur Musalman

In this podcast, we speak to Dr. Muneeza Rizvi about Palestine, Kashmir, and the promise that their struggles for liberation offers to the world. We talk about Rizvi's essay called Palestine and the Question of Islam, in which she interrogates the policing of Islam's visibility in the politics of Palestine. We also dive into the widespread but uncritical belief shared by many in the "impregnabilit...

In this podcast, we speak to Professor SherAli Tareen about the topics that he explores in his book that came out recently, Perilous Intimacies: Debating Hindu-Muslim Friendship After Empire. In this book, Tareen explores how leading South Asian Muslim thinkers imagined and contested the boundaries of Hindu-Muslim friendship from the late eighteenth to the mid-twentieth centuries. In this podcast,...

According to Paul Heck, networks of taṣawwuf took the lead in resisting European colonial powers in the nineteenth century, for example in North Africa against the French and in the North Caucasus against the Russians. In this podcast, we speak to Dr. Farah El-Sharif, about how Sufi scholars led the resistance against colonial powers and injustice. In her work, she highlights how, for Sufi warrior...

In this podcast, we speak to Professor Hafsa Kanjwal, about her book that was published recently, called Colonizing Kashmir: State-building under Indian Occupation. In her work, she highlights how India entrenched and consolidated its colonization of Kashmir through processes of emotional integration, development, and normalization. While most of the works on Kashmir's history and politics imb...

In this podcast, we speak to Professor SherAli Tareen. He is the Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Franklin and Marshall College and author of Defending Muḥammad in Modernity. In this podcast, we talked about: Questioning the validity of secularism's claims about itself and its remaking of Islam. Evaluating the dichotomies like good Muslim/bad Muslim, moderate Islam/extremist Islam, poli...

This is the first podcast from our series on "Islam, and the Question of Resisting Oppression". We speak to Professor Ovamir Anjum, and we discuss, among many other things, Islam's framework of resistance to oppression.  Recommended Readings: 1. Politics, Law, and Community in Islamic Thought: The Taymiyyan Moment, by Ovamir Anjum 2. Islam and the Problem of Black Suffering, by Sherman Jackson 3....

In this second part of our conversation with Professor Salman Sayyid, we discussed, among many things, how secularism and the dichotomies that it produces, have been used as discursive and political formations in order to domesticate Muslims, and regulate the behavior of Muslims.  Recommended Readings: 1. Formations of the Secular: Christianity, Islam, Modernity, by, Talal Asad. 2. The Imposs...

In this episode, we speak to Professor Salman Sayyid, on how Islam/Muslimness is central to the liberation struggle of Kashmiri Muslims, and how the depoliticization of Islam is a product of European cultural hegemony. This is the first part of the two-part series. Recommended Readings: 1. Recalling the Caliphate: Decolonization and the World Order by Salman Sayyid. 2. A Fundamental Fear: Eurocent...

We talk about India's project of normalization of its colonialization of Kashmir, and the different modes of power put to use by India to achieve it. Featuring Professor Ather Zia and Professor Muhamad Junaid. Recommended Reading: Israel's Occupation by Neve Gordon.

We talk about the use of the narrative of women's rights in the justification of colonialism. Recommended Readings: In the Name of Women's Rights: The Rise of Femonationalism by Sara R. Farris Do Muslim Women Need Saving? by Lila Abu-Lughod Colonial Fantasies by Meyda Yegenoglu The Political Psychology Of Veil by Sahar Ghumkhor

We talk about the cultural and psychological aspects of colonialism and decolonization. We also discuss five forms of survival that are essential for a colonized people in their resistance against colonialism. Recommended Readings: Decolonizing the Mind by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o Moving the Centre: The Struggle for Cultural Freedoms by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o Black Skin, White Masks by Frantz Fanon

We talk about Fanon and some of his ideas about settler-colonialism and the use of violence in the decolonization struggle. We also discuss briefly Fanon's exclusion of Islam from his works on Algerian resistance to colonialism.  Recommended Readings: The Wretched of the Earth by Frantz Fanon A Dying Colonialism by Frantz Fanon Frantz Fanon and the Psychology of Oppression by Hussein Abdilahi...

This is the first podcast from our series on settler-colonialism. We talk about the threat of physical and symbolic elimination that we are faced with. Recommended readings: 1. Settler Colonialism and the Elimination of the Native by Patrick Wolfe. 2. The Hundred Years' War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917–2017 by Rashid Khalidi.