Akbar’s Chamber - Experts Talk Islam
Education
As any observer of the Islamic world—or regular listener to Akbar’s Chamber—will know, there are a dizzying variety of different forms of Islam. Yet every Muslim who follows one of these different versions believes it represents the true version of the faith. This begs the question of who gets to decide what is, and isn’t, Islam? In other words, who has the religious authority to define Islam? In this episode, we explore the social, historical, and doctrinal dimensions of religious authority through the lenses of anthropology. Step by step, we unpack the key components of religious authority, from revered historic founder figures to their living representatives, along with the crucial components of respected texts and institutions that range from mosques and mystical orders to political parties and states. While looking at Islam from the analytical outside of the social sciences, we also examine how this approach relates to two foundational Islamic concepts: the Sunna (or Model of the Prophet Muhammad) and the Jama‘a (or Muslim Community). Nile Green talks to Ismail Fajrie Alatas, author of What is Religious Authority? Cultivating Islamic Communities in Indonesia (Princeton University Press, 2021).
The Sacred Muslim Geographies of Chinese Central Asia
Dervish Poets and ‘Vernacular Islam’ in Medieval Turkey
The Magazine That Took Salafism to the World
Introduction to Akbar's Chamber
What the Prophet Muhammad Said… (and How We Know)
Deobandism: The Indian Origins of a Global Muslim Reform Movement
Ismaili Entanglements in the Indian Ocean World
The Man Who Founded the Muslim Brotherhood
Between Indo-Persian and Anglo-Persian: Cultural Encounters in the Bay of Bengal
Pakistan: Bastion and Battlefield of Islamic Modernism
The Mystic Companions of Rumi: Sufi Poetry in Classical Persian
Making Sense of ‘Multiple Islams’: The View from the Indian South
At the Religious Crossroads of Central Asia
Muslim Imperial Entanglements: The Hajj under the British Empire
The Peculiar Tale of Occultism in the Islamic Republic of Iran
The Martin Luther of the Muslim World?
The Strange Fate of the Sufi Shrine
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