Books by Kambiz GhaneaBassiri
Edited Books by Kambiz GhaneaBassiri
From 1974 to 2018, William A. Graham was the Faculty Advisor to the Harvard Mountaineering Club. ... more From 1974 to 2018, William A. Graham was the Faculty Advisor to the Harvard Mountaineering Club. None of us, four of his forrner doctoral students, ever went climbing with him, but it is not difficult to imagine him scaling a formidable rock face: we know of the physical fiûress, the willingrress to attack a mountainous obstacle, whether literally or figuratively; the judicious attention to detail in finding and reaching each hand and foothold, while not losing sight of the summit, be
All Religion Is Inter-Religion: Engaging the Work of Steven M. Wasserstrom, 2019
All Religion Is Inter-Religion analyses the ways inter-religious relations have contributed both ... more All Religion Is Inter-Religion analyses the ways inter-religious relations have contributed both historically and philosophically to the constructions of the category of “religion” as a distinct subject of study.
Regarded as contemporary classics, Steven M. Wasserstrom's Religion after Religion (1999) and Between Muslim and Jew (1995) provided a theoretical reorientation for the study of religion away from hierophanies and ultimacy, and toward lived history and deep pluralism. This book distills and systematizes this reorientation into nine theses on the study of religion.
Drawing on these theses--and Wasserstrom's opus more generally--a distinguished group of his colleagues and former students demonstrate that religions can, and must, be understood through encounters in real time and space, through the complex relations they create and maintain between people, and between people and their pasts. The book also features an afterword by Wasserstrom himself, which poses nine riddles to students of religion based on his personal experiences working on religion at the turn of the twenty-first century.
Papers by Kambiz GhaneaBassiri
Muslims and U.S. Politics Today, 2019
When Donald Trump delivered his inaugural address on January 20, 2017, certain observers notice s... more When Donald Trump delivered his inaugural address on January 20, 2017, certain observers notice something moving. Peeping bleakly amidst the 'carnage' was an immiserating meme taken from the Batman film The Dark Knight Rises. In that film, the supervillain bane frees thousands of criminals from prison as he announces, 'We take Gotham from the corrupt, the rich, the oppressors of generations who have kept you down with myths of opportunity, and we give it back to you...the people.' In his inauguration address, President Trump marks his Presidency as the day that 'we are transferring power from Washington DC and giving it back to you...the people.'
In the flurry and the fury of the new Trump administration, most of us did not grasp the import of this political manifesto compressed into a meme known on the Internet as the 'Baneposting' meme. What was missed was a diagnotically noteworthy implication of these eight words.....
Comics, Culture, and Religion: Faith Imagined, 2023
Craig Thompson's Habibi (2011) is a beautifully illustrated love story that tackles contemporary ... more Craig Thompson's Habibi (2011) is a beautifully illustrated love story that tackles contemporary struggles for justice through visuals of Islam. When Pantheon Books released it, with some fanfare, on the decennial anniversary of 9/11, it made as notable an artistic intervention in post-9/11 popular US conceptualization of Islam as any. Its significance as a work of social critique that reflects the society in which it was produced, however, has been overshadowed by the controversy the book has garnered since its publication. Some have praised it as "a remarkable feat of research, care, and black ink" (Smith 2011, 76) and as "a masterpiece that surely is one of a kind" (Shea 2011, 352). Thompson has been described as "the Charles Dickens of the genre" (ibid.), and, in 2012, Habibi earned him the coveted Will Eisner Award for Best Writer/Artist. Others have critiqued Habibi for its "jumbled storytelling" and for unironically "indulging" in Orientalist fantasies (Cresswell 2011, 26). They have faulted Thompson for his nauseating "appropriation" of Islamic culture and for promoting stereotypes of Islam "by overly sexualizing women [and] littering the text with an abundance of savage Arabs" (Damluji 2011). This chapter aims to move discussions of Habibi beyond its monumental artistry and questions about the judiciousness of Thompson's portrayal of Islam. It examines what this epic narrative, by one of the most prominent graphic novelists today, reveals about the US society as it has sought to come to terms with the place of American Muslims in its religiopolitical landscape after 9/11. Thompson has explained that Habibi "was born in the wake of 9/11" as he sought to redress the Islamophobia, xenophobia, and racism that had become "rampant everywhere" in the United States (Thompson 2020). "In the wake of the tragedy, " he told Guernica magazine, "I felt a stronger sense of American
Routledge Handbook of Islam in the West, 2022
MAVCOR Journal, 2022
The marketing of “wudhu socks" provides an interesting window onto how the forces of consumer cap... more The marketing of “wudhu socks" provides an interesting window onto how the forces of consumer capitalism in twenty-first-century America are brought to bear on a centuries-old hermeneutical, legal, and theological tradition in Islam that has long conceptualized purity through embodiment and objects.
Material Religion, 2020
The monumental Alabaster Mosque of the Ottoman-appointed governor of Egypt Muhammad ‘Ali Pasha (r... more The monumental Alabaster Mosque of the Ottoman-appointed governor of Egypt Muhammad ‘Ali Pasha (r. 1805–1848) has been varyingly examined as a visual representation of the Pasha’s political ambitions, modernizing spirit, nationalist aspirations, and cosmopolitanism. Scholars have generally sought to explain the significance of Muhammad ‘Ali’s mosque through such structuring concepts as modernity and nationalism, but questions remain as to why Muhammad ‘Ali sought to embody his political agenda and personal ambitions by monumentalizing a place of worship. What about the mosque as an Islamic object and a place of worship was significant for conceptualizing modernity and nationalism in early-nineteenth-century Egypt? By approaching the mosque as a structuring institution of Islam, this article highlights the distinctiveness of the mosque as a site and an object through which Muhammad ‘Ali negotiated varying conceptions of sovereignty, power, and national identity at a time of transition in Egyptian history.
All Religion Is Inter-Religion, 2019
Review of Middle East Studies, 2012
Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe and the rest of the world, this is by Palgrave M... more Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe and the rest of the world, this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS.
Journal of Islamic Studies, 2007
Journal of Muslim Philanthropy and Civil Society, 2017
Since 9/11, U.S. Muslim philanthropy has generally been framed in terms of national security and ... more Since 9/11, U.S. Muslim philanthropy has generally been framed in terms of national security and civil liberties. In practice, however, U.S. Muslims’ charitable giving has posed no threat to national security, nor has the government’s closing of some of the largest Muslim relief organizations after 9/11 had the chilling effect that many predicted it would have on U.S. Muslims’ giving. This article argues that American Muslim philanthropy post-9/11 belies enduring presuppositions about the alleged ‘rigidity” of Islamic norms and the alleged “insularity” of the U.S. Muslim community. Each of these presuppositions has yielded widespread misapprehensions about the nature of Muslim philanthropy in the U.S. since 9/11. Contrary to these misapprehensions, the actual philanthropic practice of the U.S. Muslim community in the post-9/11 moment highlights the polyvalence and fluidity of the public practice of Islam. In the fluid space of practice, American Muslims have brought together Islamic vocabularies of charity and American legal and sociopolitical norms regarding philanthropy to forge new relations across groups of varying social, religious, political, cultural, and economic backgrounds.
This essay argues that al-Shaykh al-Mufid did not simply use Kalam to defend Imami beliefs and do... more This essay argues that al-Shaykh al-Mufid did not simply use Kalam to defend Imami beliefs and doctrines. His attempt to wed Kalam with Imami doctrines demanded that the latter be expressed in a logically consistent manner. This demand shifted al-Mufid away from prevailing modes of Kalam argumentation in the fourth/tenth and fifth/eleventh centuries rooted in epistemological reasoning, and it led him to introduce novel ways of making rational theological arguments fundamentally based in metaphysics.
Cambridge Companion to American Islam, ed. Juliane Hammer & Omid Safi (Cambridge University Press, 2013)
International Journal of Applied Psychoanalytic Studies, 2010
In the past two decades, US wars in Muslim-majority countries along with Muslim militants' attack... more In the past two decades, US wars in Muslim-majority countries along with Muslim militants' attacks on the United States have raised questions about the place of Muslims in America's multicultural society. Attempts to confi gure the place of Muslim selves in American body politic have focused primarily on the nature of Islam and its relation to American interests rather than on an analysis of the political policies that have shaped our times. This privileging of religio-cultural explanations of US relations with the Muslim world has engendered the presumption that all Muslims are suspect unless they prove themselves otherwise. Major Nidal Malik Hasan's case, whatever his personal psychological condition, is an example of the way in which attempts at providing a religio-cultural solution to a political problem has placed the burden of bridging the gap between American multicultural ideals and American policies that view Muslims as suspect on the back of individual American Muslim selves. Copyright
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Books by Kambiz GhaneaBassiri
Edited Books by Kambiz GhaneaBassiri
Regarded as contemporary classics, Steven M. Wasserstrom's Religion after Religion (1999) and Between Muslim and Jew (1995) provided a theoretical reorientation for the study of religion away from hierophanies and ultimacy, and toward lived history and deep pluralism. This book distills and systematizes this reorientation into nine theses on the study of religion.
Drawing on these theses--and Wasserstrom's opus more generally--a distinguished group of his colleagues and former students demonstrate that religions can, and must, be understood through encounters in real time and space, through the complex relations they create and maintain between people, and between people and their pasts. The book also features an afterword by Wasserstrom himself, which poses nine riddles to students of religion based on his personal experiences working on religion at the turn of the twenty-first century.
Papers by Kambiz GhaneaBassiri
In the flurry and the fury of the new Trump administration, most of us did not grasp the import of this political manifesto compressed into a meme known on the Internet as the 'Baneposting' meme. What was missed was a diagnotically noteworthy implication of these eight words.....
Regarded as contemporary classics, Steven M. Wasserstrom's Religion after Religion (1999) and Between Muslim and Jew (1995) provided a theoretical reorientation for the study of religion away from hierophanies and ultimacy, and toward lived history and deep pluralism. This book distills and systematizes this reorientation into nine theses on the study of religion.
Drawing on these theses--and Wasserstrom's opus more generally--a distinguished group of his colleagues and former students demonstrate that religions can, and must, be understood through encounters in real time and space, through the complex relations they create and maintain between people, and between people and their pasts. The book also features an afterword by Wasserstrom himself, which poses nine riddles to students of religion based on his personal experiences working on religion at the turn of the twenty-first century.
In the flurry and the fury of the new Trump administration, most of us did not grasp the import of this political manifesto compressed into a meme known on the Internet as the 'Baneposting' meme. What was missed was a diagnotically noteworthy implication of these eight words.....
In contrast to discussions that describe or explain Islamicate calligraphy in terms of religious principles or abstract theories of aesthetics, this site aims to draw attention to Islamicate calligraphy as both a highly artistic medium of communication and a craft. For this reason, the site focuses on exemplary works of individual artists rather than on “Islamic” or “Iranian calligraphy” in general. Furthermore, it introduces viewers to the technical vocabulary and artistic techniques related to the production of calligraphy, with the aim of helping viewers develop a visual vocabulary through which they could arrive at their own conclusions about the aesthetics of Islamicate calligraphy. In this way, priority is granted not to the historical development of Islamicate calligraphy, but to casting light upon the intricacies of the particular artistic figures and techniques that brought it forth in the context of greater Iran.