New Blurbs

for Siraj Ahmed's Archaeology of Babel: The Colonial Foundation of the Humanities

"An important, scintillating study that deserves a wide interdisciplinary readership, Archaeology of Babel reappraises the historical roots of philology and encourages readers to re-imagine our present."

for Cihan Tuğal's Caring for the Poor: Islamic and Christian Benevolence in a Liberal World

"This scholarly study of the ethical transformations of charity from early times to today is an attempt to analyze the emergence of what Cihan Tugal calls 'neoliberal subjectivity' – first in Euro-America, and subsequently in the Middle East. The book contains a rich account of the development of Islamist charity organizations in modern Egypt and Turkey based on the author’s own fieldwork. Most thought provokingly, this work demonstrates how central the history of an apparently marginal social practice can be for understanding major problems of our world. Caring for the Poor is a welcome contribution to an important question and deserves to be widely read."

for Irfan Ahmad's Religion as Critique: Islamic Critical Thinking from Mecca to the Marketplace

"In this enlightening and impressive examination of Islamic thought, Irfan Ahmad investigates a part of the Muslim world too often regarded as marginal but which ought to be recognized as central. Ahmad argues that Islam has its own form of religious criticism carried out by believing Muslims with reference to their own traditions. Will be of interest not only to those who study modern Islamic thought but also to scholars of religion and postcolonial studies and to anthropologists beyond area specialists."