Contemporary Islamic Studies

Oxford University

Explore key questions shaping Muslim societies today, with a particular focus on religious authority, religion and politics, and modern Islamic thought. Drawing on seminars, lectures, and conversations with leading scholars, this podcast series is produced by the Contemporary Islamic Studies Programme at the Middle East Centre, University of Oxford. Episodes reflect the Programme’s commitment to rigorous scholarship and international academic exchange, highlighting research at the intersection of Islam, society, and contemporary global debates, and showcasing collaborations between Oxford and partner institutions.

  1. Jun 15

    Iraq's Shi'a warriors: From battlefield to parliament

    Dr Inna Rudolf (KCL) discusses her new book 'Iraq's Shi'a warriors: From battlefield to parliament', chaired by Professor Raihan Ismail (St Antony’s College). By examining the PMU's self-positioning as a pillar of Iraq's defence infrastructure, this book offers a critical perspective on the prospects for Security Sector Reform (SSR) and highlights the limitations of externally driven Disarmament, Demobilisation, and Reintegration (DDR) efforts. It speaks to scholars of Iraq and the Middle East, as well as diplomats, security actors, and SSR practitioners. The book is also a valuable teaching resource for undergraduate and postgraduate courses on conflict, security, identity politics, terrorism, and peace building. Its unique fieldwork methodology offers guidance for researchers engaging with armed non-state and para-state actors in post-conflict settings. Altogether, the book addresses a strong academic and policy demand for evidence-based analysis of the PMU's complex identity - offering a flexible framework for studying hybrid security actors with transnational connections and domestic ambitions. Published by Manchester University Press in 2026: https://manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/9781526193063/ Dr. Inna Rudolf is a Fellow at the Centre for Statecraft and National Security (CSNS) and a Research Fellow at the Centre for the Study of Divided Societies in the Department of War Studies, King's College London.

    42 min

  2. May 19

    Waning Crescent: The Rise and Fall of Global Islam

    Professor Faisal Devji (Balliol College) discusses his new book 'Waning Crescent: The Rise and Fall of Global Islam'. Chaired by Professor Raihan Ismail (St Antony’s College). About the Book: A compelling examination of the rise of Islam as a global historical actor. Until the nineteenth century, Islam was variously understood as a set of beliefs and practices. But after Muslims began to see their faith as an historical actor on the world stage, they needed to narrate Islam’s birth anew as well as to imagine its possible death. Faisal Devji argues that this change, sparked by the crisis of Muslim sovereignty in the age of European empire, provided a way of thinking about agency in a global context: an Islam liberated from the authority of kings and clerics had the potential to represent the human race itself as a newly empirical reality. Ordinary Muslims, now recognized as the privileged representatives of Islam, were freed from traditional forms of Islamic authority. However, their conception of Islam as an impersonal actor in history meant that it could not be defined in either religious or political terms. Its existence as a civilizational and later ideological subject also deprived figures like God and the Prophet of their theological subjectivities while robbing the Muslim community of its political agency. Devji illuminates this history and explores its ramifications for the contemporary Muslim world. Published by Yale University Press in 2025: https://yalebooks.co.uk/book/9780300276633/waning-crescent/  About the Author: Faisal Devji is Beit Professor of Global and Imperial History and Fellow of Balliol College, Oxford. He is the author of The Impossible Indian: Gandhi and the Temptation of Violence and Muslim Zion: Pakistan as a Political Idea.

    1h 2m

  3. May 7

    Brothers Behind Bars: A History of the Muslim Brotherhood from the Palestine War to Egypt’s Prisons

    Mathias Ghyoot (Princeton University) discusses his new book 'Brothers Behind Bars'. Chaired by Professor Raihan Ismail (St Antony’s College). Over the course of three decades, between 1948 and 1975, more than 60,000 members of the Muslim Brotherhood were imprisoned in Egypt. What did these prison experiences mean for the social, intellectual, and organizational development of the Brotherhood? What role has the prison, more broadly, played in the history of Islamism? And how have interactions between the state and political prisoners of diverse ideological commitments shaped the debate over the role of religion and politics in twentieth-century Egypt? Brothers Behind Bars: A History of the Muslim Brotherhood from the Palestine War to Egypt’s Prisons (Oxford University Press, 2025) tells the harrowing yet fascinating history of the Muslim Brotherhood’s imprisonment, from the Palestine War through the consolidation of President Anwar al-Sadat’s rule. Drawing on a wide range of previously untapped sources—including prison memoirs written by Muslim Brothers and Sisters—Mathias Ghyoot will in this in this talk go behind prison walls to show how moderates and radicals, jailers and intelligence officers, clerics and communists were drawn into a prolonged struggle over the meaning of Islam in twentieth-century Egypt. Challenging dominant narratives about the prison experiences of the Muslim Brothers, and about the development of Islamism more broadly, the talk will foreground the role of memory in shaping collective experience and argue for the need to construct an alternative archive beyond both the Egyptian National Archives and the records of the Muslim Brotherhood. In doing so, the talk ultimately addresses a critical methodological question for historians of the modern Middle East: how to write the history of the carceral state that was—and remains—modern Egypt. Published by Oxford University Press in 2025: https://global.oup.com/academic/product/brothers-behind-bars-9780197662731?cc=gb&lang=en& AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY Mathias Ghyoot is a PhD candidate in Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University, specializing in the social and intellectual history of the modern Middle East and South Asia. His dissertation offers a global history of the rise of Islamism, tracing the development of organized Islamic activism from the late Ottoman Empire through the interwar Muslim world. Mathias is also working on an edition and translation of the lost travelogue of Sayyid Qutb, tentatively titled The America I Saw: The Travel Writings of an Islamist in the Making (forthcoming with Syracuse University Press).

    55 min

  4. Feb 2

    Closing ceremony of the 2-day workshop, Pahang and the Sea: Maritime Networks and Connections between Southeast Asia and Beyond

    Various guest speakers contribute closing presentations and thoughts, to formally close the 2-day international conference held at St Antony's College, University of Oxford.

    21 min

  5. Feb 2

    Finale Roundtable commentary

    Prof Dr Amal Ghazal provides summary thoughts of the entire 2-day workshop as part of the finale roundtable discussion.

    18 min

  6. Jan 27

    Pahang and the Persian Gulf

    Dr Rowena binti Abdul Razak contributed to Panel Two of Day Two of this 2-day workshop. This paper examines the maritime connections between Pahang and the Persian Gulf. Since Safavid times, visitors from Persia have been coming to the Malay Archipelago. These connections have taken the form of trade, linguistic exchange and also social integration. The Persianate world is currently under study to include different geographic areas, from Iran through to the Indian Ocean. In my paper, I will reframe the Malay world within this context and look at how Persian culture disseminated and was brought through India, permeating Malay culture and eventually reaching Pahang where it firmly but subtly established itself.

    17 min

  7. Jan 27

    Pahang and Euro-Asian Business Partnerships in Southeast Asia and the South China Sea in the 16th Century

    Dr Jorge Santos Alves contributed to Panel Two of Day Two of this 2-day workshop. Pahang was an important port for the operations and investments of overseas Chinese networks in Southeast Asia by the end of the 15th century. In the early decades of the 16th century, Pahang's significance grew even greater, as Chinese businessmen established commercial partnerships with Portuguese, Luso-Asians, and other Asians, enhancing trade with ports in southern China, particularly in the provinces of Guangdong and Fujian. This paper will utilise previously published Chines documentation alongside relevant printed or unpublished European/Portuguese documentation. Among the unpublished Portuguese documentation, a document from 1520 stands out, containing the guidelines for the first treaty signed by Pahang with a European power, Portugal.

    15 min

  8. Jan 27

    The Connections between Pahang and The Kingdom of Italy in the Writings of Giovanni Battista Cerutti in a Global Perspective

    Dr Alessandro Di Meo contributed to Panel Two of Day Two of this 2-day workshop speaking on ‘The Connections between Pahang and The Kingdom of Italy in the Writings of Giovanni Battista Cerutti in a Global Perspective’. Giovanni Battista Cerruti, an Italian explorer, settled in 1882 in Singapore, where he set up a profitable business. He later traveled to Siam, the island of Java, and went to the island of Nias, in front of the Sumatra’s coasts, to facilitate the studies and explorations conducted by ethnographer Elio Modigliani, sent by the Italian Geographical Society. During his explorations in Nias Island, he established a remarkable ethnographic collection, which he sold to the Perak government in June 1891. In the same year, Cerruti settled in the Mai Darat territory, in the interior of the Malay Peninsula, to conduct ethnographic and scientific research, analyze local products, and examine the possibility of exporting them. In the following years, he explored the lands of the Sakai, coming into contact with the Mai Bretak, a people settled on the border between the states of Perak and Pahang (1893); to his experience, which lasted until his death, in 1914, he dedicated a book, Nel paese dei veleni e fra i cacciatori di teste, published in Italian and English as My friends the savages: notes and observations of a Perak settler, Malay Peninsula. In 1906, he briefly returned to Italy, presenting his research on the Sakai in the Milan International Exhibition; in the following months, he sold his ethnographic and naturalistic collections to several Italian museums. Giovanni Battista Cerruti is considered a passeur culturel between late Nineteenth Century Italy and the Malaysian States in the age of imperialism, due to the ethnographic collections he assembled and the reports he published during his lifetime, which will be the subject of this essay. Please find the slides for this lecture here: https://media.podcasts.ox.ac.uk/sant/islamic_studies/2026-01-27-sant-cis-alessandro_di_meo-SLIDES.pdf

    20 min
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About

Explore key questions shaping Muslim societies today, with a particular focus on religious authority, religion and politics, and modern Islamic thought. Drawing on seminars, lectures, and conversations with leading scholars, this podcast series is produced by the Contemporary Islamic Studies Programme at the Middle East Centre, University of Oxford. Episodes reflect the Programme’s commitment to rigorous scholarship and international academic exchange, highlighting research at the intersection of Islam, society, and contemporary global debates, and showcasing collaborations between Oxford and partner institutions.

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