Rethinking Islam & the West: A New Narrative for the Age of Crises

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In this book, Ahmed Paul Keeler examines the worldview, until comparatively recently unquestioned, of ever continuing human progress. The author directly connects the present ‘Age of Crises’ to an adherence to the myth of progress and the loss of balance in modern life; “the balance between the material and the spiritual, and between ourselves and the environment in which we live”. In this thought-provoking book, we are invited to examine the troubles we are experiencing and the tangled relationship between Islam and the West through a distinctive lens. Deepthi is a Research Assistant Professor researching the Art History of South Asia at George Mason University. Her research centers on transcultural art objects, encounters, and artistic practices in littoral South India in the 18th and 19th centuries. In this talk she focuses on the elaborately carved chests and bedsteads that bridged the cultures on either side of the Indian ocean. A conference @CambridgeUniversity Sun, 3rd Nov, 2019. Organised by Cambridge University Islamic Society. Watch the videos from the conference below, featuring Imam Dawud Walid, Abdulhakim Murad (Tim Winter) and IHRC’s Arzu Merali. CIS-DHF Malabar series– Emma Flatt on ‘ The Courts of the Deccan Sultanates: Living Well in the Persian Cosmopolis‘ 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.

The history of music and dance under the Deccan Sultanates is still fragmentary at best and there is much that we do not know. In this lecture, I hope to sketch out a larger overview of the performing arts in these courtly contexts, with a central focus on the period from the 1580s to the 1660s, especially in the courts of Bijapur and Golkonda. My particular focus is on how the expressive arts were represented in Dakanī poetry and courtly painting, and how we might tentatively begin making sense of the sonic experiences embedded in these muted sources. Global Jihad tells the story of four distinct jihadi waves, each with its own program for achieving a global end: whether a Jihadi International to liberate Muslim lands from foreign occupation; al-Qa’ida’s call to drive the United States out of the Muslim world; ISIS using “jihadi cool” to recruit followers; or leaderless efforts of stochastic terror to “keep the dream alive.” Robinson connects the rise of global jihad to other “movements of rage” such as the Nazi Brownshirts, White supremacists, Khmer Rouge, and Boko Haram. Ultimately, he shows that while global jihad has posed a low strategic threat, it has instigated an outsized reaction from the United States and other Western nations. Sadly we had technical difficulties with the integrated microphone so we don’t have a video – just (most of) the audio – hopefully this captures the gist of the conversation.Opening Session: Student Experiences on Being Muslim in the Modern University Speaker: Taskeen Adam, PhD candidate at the Centre of Development Studies, University of Cambridge. She is pursuing research on the role of Massive Open Online Courses in supporting the marginalised in South Africa.

From Konkan to Coromandel – Richard David Williams on “ Performance, Poetry, and Painting: Towards a History of Music in the Deccan Sultanates’‘ From Konkan to Coromandel – Prof. Sarah Fee & Rajarshi Sengupta on “ Cloth that Changed the World: Histories and Contemporaneity of Kalamkari Making’‘

Cambridge Festival 2021 – Emanuelle Degli Esposti on ‘ Charity and activism in Shiism: How grassroots are changing the face of British Shiism ‘ The Deccan sultans left a grand architectural and artistic legacy. They commissioned palaces, mosques, gardens and tombs as well as decorative paintings and coins. Of these sultanates, the Nizam Shahs (r. 1490-1636) were particularly significant, being one of the first to emerge from the crumbling edifice of the Bahmani Empire (c. 1347-1527). Yet their rich material record remains largely unstudied in the scholarly literature, obscuring their cultural and historical importance. 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. Award-winning Egyptian author and filmmaker Nadia Kamel’s heritage is a complex blend of religions and cultures. Her mother is a half-Jewish, half-Italian Christian who converted to Islam when she married Nadia’s half-Turkish, half-Ukrainian father. But her book, Al-Mawloudah, is only partially about the life of one woman of Egypt; it is also the documentation of an oral history of Egypt’s foreigners, Jews and Communists; of the inhabitants of Cairo, the consecutive rules of Gamal Abdel-Nasser and Anwar El-Sadat and of course of the latter’s dramatic visit to Jerusalem and the subsequent peace process. Above all, it is a story told from the heart with a great deal of passion. From Konkan to Coromandel – Sylvia Houghteling on “ The Qalamkari Textiles of Golconda: Searching for Histories of Production, Patronage, & Place‘‘

Paul Keeler and Yusuf Chaudury discuss the problems in presenting the theory and some solutions to the issues Shahzia Sikander changed the game of the art world with her breakthrough at the Whitney Biennial in 1997. This year, Salman Toor, debuted his first solo museum exhibition at the Whitney, How Will I Know. In June, Sikander will open a career retrospective, Extraordinary Realities, at the Morgan Library & Museum co-organised with the RISD Museum. Centered on issues of gender, identity, global affiliations, appropriation, and narrative, this conversation engages the relationship between two artists on how they have navigated the shifting worlds of New York and Pakistan. In dialogue, we will pause and reflect over how we got here and anticipate where we are going. At this event, held in English, the author was in discussion with Dr Hussam Ahmed, a Visiting Researcher at the Centre and Professor Khaled Fahmy from the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies. Three early career researchers from the University of Cambridge will present elements of their work and engage in a moderated discussion via Zoom. 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.Hussam R. Ahmed is a historian of the modern Middle East. He completed his Ph.D. at McGill University in 2018 focusing on the social and cultural history of modern Egypt. He then took up postdoctoral fellowships at KU Leuven and the University of Cambridge before joining the Department of History at the National University of Ireland, Maynooth as Assistant Professor. A chance meeting with a master musician from India introduced him to a new cultural realm. In response, he formulated and organized The World of Islam Festival that took place in London in 1976, was opened by Her Majesty the Queen, and was the most comprehensive exposition of Islamic culture ever to have taken place in the West. Six months before the festival opened, he embraced Islam.