Scholarly conversations across Muslim worlds.
New Books in Islamic Studies brings authors and scholars into careful conversation about recent work in Islamic studies. The show moves from book origins and methods into questions of morality, identity, law, conversion, power, and lived religious practice.
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New Books in Islamic Studies is a scholarly interview series centered on recent books about Islam and Muslim worlds. Its conversations are measured, generous, and usually anchored in the shape of an author's research project. The show does not rush. A typical episode introduces the book, establishes the scholar's field or method, and then asks how the argument changes a larger conversation. The result is academic without being sealed off from ordinary life. Recent episodes range from Islamic self-help circles in Singapore to Puerto Rican converts to Islam in the United States. They also move through Islamic moral philosophy, Christian-Muslim relations in Indonesia, global histories of Islam, early modern law, and Mediterranean debates over purity and sainthood. The show is especially good at holding doctrine and daily practice together. Questions about revelation, divine authority, and the problem of evil sit beside questions about family meals, pork, beer, sexuality, foodscapes, and cultural belonging. It also keeps political context in view. Singaporean Malay Muslim identity, post-Reformation Indonesian belonging, and the language of the Islamosphere all appear as part of wider histories of power, race, state formation, and public meaning. The conversations often linger over method. Ethnography, comparison, and the difficulty of carrying concepts across religious or geographic boundaries all become part of the story. That patience matters. A discussion of blood may become a discussion of humoral medicine, kinship, milk, semen, ink, knowledge, and the limits of assuming that one metaphor means the same thing everywhere. A discussion of conversion may become a study of dinner tables, relatives, moral obligation, and the effort to remain connected. The show suits listeners who want scholarship with context rather than headlines. It rewards attention, and it trusts complicated answers.
Made for: For listeners who enjoy academic interviews about religion, history, theology, anthropology, and lived Muslim experience. It especially suits readers looking for context before choosing a serious new book.
What sets it apart: The show pairs new-book discussion with patient attention to method, geography, and public stakes. Its range reaches from moral philosophy to food studies without treating Islamic studies as a single story.
This podcast is a channel on the New Books Network. The New Books Network is an academic audio library dedicated to public education. In each episode you will hear scholars discuss their recently published research with another expert in their field. Discover our 150+ channels and browse our 28,000+ episodes on our website: newbooksnetwork.com Subscribe to our free weekly Substack newsletter to get informative, engaging content straight to your inbox: https://newbooksnetwork.substack.com/ Follow us on Instagram and Bluesky to learn about more our latest interviews: @newbooksnetwork Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/islamic-studies
Based on 6 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Book-centered conversations connect Islamic thought and history to the ordinary places where belief, identity, culture, and power meet.
New Books in Islamic Studies turns book-centered interviews into careful conversations about how religion operates in thought, culture, and public life.
A ceramic forgery gets its craft examined, and your museum eye has some catching up to do.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
Food, family, and faith frame a broad discussion of Puerto Rican Muslim life.
This episode centers on Ken Chedwood's discussion of Bariqua Muslims, Everyday Cosmopolitanism Among Puerto Rican Converts to Islam. The strongest thread is the way the conversation grounds broad questions in lived practice: fieldwork across multiple cities and digital space,…
A study of saints, blood, and translation, framed through parallel stories rather than equivalence.
Shobana Xavier's conversation with Manuela Ceballos traces how purity, sainthood, power, and blood move across religious and geographic worlds without settling into fixed meanings.
A careful account of Chinese Muslim history through movement, education, and the texts that carried learning.
The episode follows Ryan Thum's Islamic China and Asian History into a question that has often been treated too narrowly: how Chinese Muslims belong within Chinese history and a wider Islamic world.
A measured episode on the skilled remaking and museum stakes of Islamic ceramics.
Invisible Hands approaches Islamic ceramics as proof of skilled making, but also of the market that gave those skills value. It moves past the usual moral frame around fabrication and forgery, looking instead at what remade objects can show about expertise that has often been…
A school church exhibit turns feasts, food, and stories into a shared entry point for Muslim, Christian, and nonreligious children.
Religion at one remove becomes the episode's most useful thread. The handbook is approached through heritage, cultural framing, and the openings those perspectives create for interreligious exchange.
A grounded argument for treating Islamophobia as structural, urgent, and shaped by public language.
Islamophobia is framed here as something more entrenched than a matter of individual prejudice. Shabna Begum is drawn through definitions, the weight of language, counter-terror policy, media influence, political rhetoric, immigration, the linking of Muslims with terrorism, and…
A focused review of how scripture-first theories give revelation final authority in moral judgment.
This single-episode review frames a sharp problem in Islamic moral thought: what happens when reason and revelation appear to pull in different directions.
A host and three academics dissect one topic weekly, from archaea to the Tudors.
Philosophy argued aloud, with dry edges.
CMU, recorded before it gets polished.
Seminar-room depth on Russia and Eurasia.
New scholarship, patiently brought into focus.
Host Shahnaz Haqqani interviews philosopher Amir Saemi about his 2024 Oxford University Press book, 'Morality and Revelation in Islamic Thought and Beyond: A New Problem of Evil.' Saemi introduces the 'problem of divinely prescribed evil,' where scriptural passages seem to conflict with modern moral judgments.
Shabna Begum, CEO of the Runnymede Trust, discusses her journey from teaching to leading the UK's racial justice think tank.
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This episode features an interview with Amir Saemi about his book 'Morality and Revelation in Islamic Thought and Beyond: A New Problem of Evil', exploring how scripture, morality, and divine authority intersect in Islamic philosophy.
This episode features an interview with Hans A.
This episode features an interview with Professor James McDougall about his new book 'Worlds of Islam: A Global History', exploring its origins and development over two decades.
This episode features an interview with Dr.
Shobana Xavier welcomes Ken Chedwood to New Books in Islamic Studies to discuss Bariqua Muslims, Everyday Cosmopolitanism Among Puerto Rican Converts to Islam.
Shobana Xavier opens with Manuela Ceballos and her book Between Dung and Blood: Purity, Sainthood, and Power in the Early Modern Western Mediterranean.
New Books in Islamic Studies interviews Ryan Thum about Islamic China: An Asian History, a book on Chinese Muslims across the Ming, Qing, and Republican eras.
The host speaks with Margaret about Invisible Hands, a book on fabrication, forgery, and the art of Islamic ceramics.
The conversation examines how heritage and cultural framing place religion at one remove.
This episode features an interview with Shabna Begum from the Runnymede Trust discussing strategies and research on countering Islamophobia.
This episode of Radio ReOrient features an interview with Kamran Khan discussing the intersections of linguistics, citizenship, and belonging.
This episode of Radio ReOrient features an interview with Hatem Bazian and Ismail Patel discussing why Palestine activism and resistance matter, hosted by Claudia Radiven and Marchella Ward.
This episode features an interview with Sherman Jackson discussing the concept of the Islamic secular, exploring its implications within the Islamosphere and post-colonial contexts.