Ahmed Paul Keeler refuses this question in his eye-opening new book ‘Rethinking Islam and the West: A New Narrative for the Age of Crises’. According to Keeler, the Islamic world has not “fallen behind”; rather the modern idea that human history is one of uninterrupted progress and development and that the Islamic world has fallen behind in recent times should be questioned and re-examined altogether. Keeler rejects the idea that the contemporary world represents the most “advanced” and magnificent phase of human history and that the success of cultures should be judged based on their resemblance to today’s “developed” Western world. According to him, the modern world represents a deviation in human history. With predatory capitalism, colonialism, obsessive consumerism, hedonistic individualism, and technological advancements that are ultimately irresponsible towards man and disrespectful of nature, the modern world has dragged humanity into a dead end, or ‘an age of crises’. CIS-DHF Malabar series– Katherine Kasdorf on ‘ Monumental Jinas and Networks of Prestige: Jain Temples of the Hoysala Capital’ Three early career researchers from the University of Cambridge will present elements of their work and engage in a moderated discussion via Zoom.

Islam in the Greek world is an abiding theme in Elizabeth Key Fowden’s research, which draws on architectural, visual and textual sources to analyse cultural, religious and intellectual exchange. Spanning from late antique Syria to Ottoman Greece to the late nineteenth-/early twentieth-century Aegean to contemporary Arab art, her publications include The Barbarian Plain: Saint Sergius between Rome and Iran (1999), Studies on Hellenism, Christianity and the Umayyads (with Garth Fowden, 2004), ‘The lamp and the wine flask: Early Muslim interest in Christian monasticism’ (2007), ‘Jerusalem and the work of discontinuity’ (2019), ‘The Parthenon Mosque, King Solomon and the Greek Sages’ (2019) and ‘The circle in the work of Kamal Boullata’ (2021). She is currently completing a monograph, The Parthenon Mosque. For Science, when we strip it from its religious context and focus solely on the notion of progress, we see Nature as only a tool for us to exploit and extract every bit of benefit from without the least thought of conservation and harmony. There is little doubt that this is how we as a species have been treating the Earth in the last 200 years. SherAli Tareen (Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Franklin & Marshall College) joined us on 27 April to discuss his new work on the idea of the Hindu-Muslim encounter in colonial India. SherAli’s first book is “Defending Muhammad in Modernity” (2019, University of Notre Dame Press) which reanimates the contours of the infamous Barelvi-Deobandi polemic as a contest between competing political theologies. In 2020, the book was awarded the American Institute of Pakistan Studies book prize. This remarkable book takes you on a photographic journey along the path taken by all the prophets and cultures, from southern Arabia to the grand Silk Road. Expanding on previous work in mapping the journey, it delves into groundbreaking discoveries by Professor Alkadi, including the Milestones of Arabia and the Hijrah route of the Prophet. These discoveries are currently showcased in an immersive exhibition at the Ithra Museum in Saudi Arabia. Offering a better understanding of Ottoman history and the lessons that can be learned from the empire’s rise and fall, our special guests include Eugene Rogan, author of The Fall of the Ottomans, Caroline Finkel, author of Osman’s Dream: The History of the Ottoman Empire, and Marc David Baer, author of The Ottomans: Khans, Caesars and Caliphs.

Cambridge Festival 2021 – Emanuelle Degli Esposti on ‘ Charity and activism in Shiism: How grassroots are changing the face of British Shiism ‘ Explanations for the weakness and failure of the uprisings in the Arab world of 2011 range from the hard-power and structure-centred accounts of conventional political science to interactionist studies emphasizing micro-dynamics and relational mechanisms. Drawing on Gramscian perspectives, and fieldwork in Egypt, this paper aims to open up an occluded line of investigation into the subaltern cultural politics of the uprising in Egypt as a way to make sense of revolutionary weaknesses and limits. This paper argues that the study of popular good sense against the regime and common sense supporting the army can help explain revolutionary weakness in Egypt during 2011-13. In this talk, Hussam R. Ahmed will speak about his new book, The Last Nahdawi: Taha Hussein and Institution Building in Egypt, released in June 201 by Stanford University Press. The book explores the efforts of Taha Hussein (1889-1973), one of the most influential thinkers and statesmen of the modern Arab world, in formulating and implementing Egypt’s cultural and educational policies within a challenging colonial context. Neither existing historiography nor literary projects grounded in postcolonial studies do justice to the institutional and political context in which Hussein was writing and making decisions. Drawing on state and university archival records and Hussein’s private papers, The Last Nahdawi shifts the focus from Hussein the Dean of Arabic Literature to the lesser-known politician and civil servant and offers the first biography in which his intellectual outlook and public career are taken equally seriously.

Ahmed Paul Keeler introduced the Mizan Thesis in an illustrated lecture at Cambridge University on April 27 th 2014. Keeler’s proposition was well received and he was invited to become a Visiting Fellow at the Centre of Islamic Studies, so that he could further develop his thesis. His work has culminated in two publications Rethinking Islam & The West: A New Narrative for the Age of Crises (2019), and A Life’s Journey: The Story behind a Book (2022). The lecture will focus on the patterns of governance of Islam in post-communist Eastern Europe, which are found to differ from those common in Western Europe. Governance of Islam in Eastern Europe, and particularly in countries with autochthonous Muslim populations, is arguably permeated by ‘churchification of Islam’. Churchification here is understood as a state-pursued policy strategy in governing of religious plurality, whereby the national legislation pertaining to governance of religions, including Islam, foresees institutional and structural churchification of registered religious collectivities along the lines of the (once) dominant (national) Christian Churches. Research findings reveal that leading Muslim religious organizations in countries under research have accepted the state-set rules of the game and have been (willingly) turning themselves into church-like institutions (national Muslim Churches), reminiscent particularly of Orthodox Churches. At times I felt the book depicted Islamic history with rose tints and at times I felt it went off course.

The capital of the Hoysala dynasty (ca. 1000-1346 CE), in present-day Halebidu, Karnataka, is best known for its elaborately sculptural Hoysaleshvara temple, dedicated to Shiva. Yet the Hoysala-period city (then called Dorasamudra) was home to numerous temples serving multiple religious communities. Dorasamudra’s Jain temples were among the most prominent in the city, attracting elite patronage, artistic innovation, and royal attention.In this talk, Dr. Kasdorf will look to the Parshvanatha temple, its inscriptions, and other Jain material from Dorasamudra—including two more monumental Jinas—to explore the role of Jain temples in the Hoysala capital and the prestigious networks in which they participated. Mohit Manohar is an Andrew W. Mellon Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts and a Ph.D. Candidate in the History of Art department at Yale University. All in all, this was a fantastic read that undoubtedly changed the way I view many things, this is what books are supposed to do, and the wisdom of Ahmed Keller is apparent in his work. Saussan is Senior Language Teacher at the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, Cambridge University. She has recently completed her PhD from Leeds University. Saussan is also the founder of Kalamna C.I.C, a social venture providing children’s Arabic classes in Cambridge: www.kalamna.org.

CIS-DHF Malabar series– Pushkar Sohoni on ‘ The Architecture of a Deccan Sultanate: Courtly Practice and Royal Authority in Late Medieval India‘ Emma Flatt is an Associate Professor at UNC. Her research has focused on mentalities and practices in the courtly societies of the Indo-Islamicate Deccani Sultanates of South India. Her doctoral thesis, which she is currently revising for publication, explored the world of the peripatetic courtier, who moved across regions and between courts in search of generous patrons and focuses on three case studies of different “knowledges” that helped a courtier attain success: letter-writing, wrestling, and astrology. These three case studies illustrate the ways in which the acquisition of expertise in a particular knowledge provided the courtiers with opportunities for self-fashioning.

CIS Public Talks – Andreas Bandak on “ Prophecies of Unity: Modelling Sainthood in Christian Syria‘ Abdelwahab El-Affendi is Professor of Politics, Provost and Acting President of the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies, Qatar. El-Affendi has served as the Head of the Politics and IR Program at the Institute (2015-2017), and was founder and Coordinator of the Democracy and Islam Program at the University of Westminster (since 1998). He is also head of Promotion Committee and the Institute. El-Affendi also served as a diplomat in the Sudanese Foreign Ministry (1990-1997), London-based journalist, including editor or managing editor of several publications (1982-1990). He has spent his working life since the Festival in establishing and engaging with projects that explore and present Islamic culture as a holistic environmental manifestation. Residing in Cambridge for the last 22 years he has had a profound impact on a number of students passing through the University. He is now lecturing and participating in seminars encouraging us to judge the success of human culture through the criteria of Mizan, which is at the heart of the Islamic unfolding. I see this book as a successor of Sir Iqbal’s magnum Opus: The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam, and Gae Eaton’s Islam and the destiny of man.

Changing our perspective from one rooted in the principle of progress to one informed by the criterion of Mizan – a concept that encompasses balance, scale, justice, and harmony – can bring about a deeper understanding of the multiple crises that humanity faces. From Konkan to Coromandel – Sylvia Houghteling on “ The Qalamkari Textiles of Golconda: Searching for Histories of Production, Patronage, & Place‘‘CIS Public Talks – Magnus Marsden on ‘ ‘Inter-Asia’ through Inland Eyes: Afghan Trading Networks across Land and Sea.‘ Join our panellists for a fascinating exploration of the reasons behind the rapid expansion of the Ottoman Empire, including its military conquests, political organisation and relative religious tolerance, and the challenges and weaknesses that led to its eventual decline. Replacing the Byzantine Empire as the major power in the Eastern Mediterranean, the Ottoman Empire reached its height under Suleiman the Magnificent in the mid-16th century, when it expanded to cover the Balkans and Hungary, and as far west as the gates of Vienna.