I spent time in Istanbul and Sarajevo this summer. Traveling throughout the Ummah always leaves me with tremendous inspiration and clarity. This newsletter will, reflecting my mental state, cover a brief smattering of ideas rather than developing one idea to a polished conclusion.

-Songs: we are in tremendous need of an Ummatic history (something I’m working on after co-authoring Islam in World History). But books don’t move the masses, songs do. I’ve been listening to a lot of Syrian nasheeds from the revolution, including those of Abdul Basit Al-Sarout and Kasem Jamous, may Allah have mercy on them both. It got me thinking: wouldn’t it be nice if the Ummah had a songbook? Diversity is our strength and it would need to be reflected in such a songbook, including the major languages of the Ummah. What types of tracks would make the list? What are the songs that everyone knows the words to, that irresistibly move the heart? I have my own list I’m developing, what would be on yours?

-Balkans: the Balkans are an important, underappreciated, understudied part of our Ummah. If you haven’t visited and you are able to, I strongly recommend it. In the English language there is a paucity of material covering the systematic erasure of Islam and Muslims from the Balkans in the post-Ottoman period. Salonica, City of Ghosts is a book I’ve been recommended and plan to read, but it highlights the persistence of the dynamics that resulted in the better-known genocide in Bosnia in the 90s.

-Reading:

Books: Recalling the Caliphate by Salman Sayyid. I’m long overdue on this one, and with all the other things I’m working on it’s been going in fits and starts, but it’s been worth it so far, though I do have some fruitful critiques I’ll explore in another newsletter, inshaa Allah.

Articles: Do yourself a favor and remember this name: Charles Hirschkind. His 1997 article “What is Political Islam”, which takes all of four minutes to read, shows why some recent concepts such as “the Islamic secular” miss the point and misread the context we’re in under secular modernity. From the article:

“Many scholars have argued that “political Islam” involves an illegitimate extension of the Islamic tradition outside of the properly religious domain it has historically occupied. Few, however, have explored this trend in relation to the contemporaneous expansion of state power and concern into vast domains of social life previously outside its purview -- including that of religion.

As we know, through this ongoing process central to modern nation building, such institutions as education, worship, social welfare and family have been incorporated to varying degrees within the regulatory apparatuses of the modernizing state. Whether in entering into business contracts, selling wares on the street, disciplining children, adding a room to a house, in all births, marriages, deaths -- at each juncture the state is present as overseer or guarantor, defining limits, procedures and necessary preconditions.

As a consequence, modern politics and the forms of power it deploys have become a condition for the practice of many personal activities.“ I’ll let you read the rest on your own.

If you want a really spicy read, try his 2002 piece entitled “Feminism, the Taliban, and the Politics of Counterinsurgency“, coauthored with Saba Mahmood. Reading the likes of Hirschkind, Talal Asad, and Mahmood in undergrad were an integral part of my journey to Islam.

May Allah guide us all