In 2021, I began a project that examines Muslim carceral theologies, focusing on prisoners’ key expressions in rituals, theodicies, hermeneutics,…
Carceral afterlives: Recording my father’s prison memoirs
Islam
A (digital) reformulation of Islamic pasts
Among the reactions to my book A New Vision for Islamic Pasts and Futures, one that stands out especially concerns…
Shahzad Bashir’s invitation to plurality
When I first taught Shahzad Bashir’s interactive book, A New Vision for Islamic Pasts and Futures, my students found it…
A new vision for scholarly publishing: Access, agency, impact
Let me begin with an overview of Brown University Digital Publications (BUDP), which originated from conversations with the Mellon Foundation…
Revisited: The “good” and the “bad” Muslims of China
The slim crescent that rose above the skyline on July 9th signifies the beginning of this year’s holy month of…
Spatial Islamophobia, conflict democracy, and Muslim cemeteries as place-making for the future
I see several old Southern Baptist and Methodist churches, some with graveyards, as I drive along in a small Southern…
White Christian nationalism and the racial politics of analogy
What if the crowds who attacked the United States Capitol building on January 6, 2021, were not dominantly white and…
American evangelicals, Islam, and defining the “other”
How should we understand conflicts over identity, theological boundaries, and orthodoxy within religious communities and across religious, national, and racial…
Religion(s) and the rule of law: Let us compare mythologies
The glittering and hurting days are almost done Then let us compare mythologies I have learned my elaborate lie of…
The rule of law never dies
"Law, religion, and state building" features essays by leading scholars and policy analysts who consider the entanglements of law, religion,…