Sayyid Qutb was amongst the avant-garde of the cadre of Muslim intellectuals who attempted to address the epistemological crisis. His work operates squarely under the assumption that the state of the Muslim umma is in desperate need of revival. He sought to address how this came to be and suggest ways to actualize an alternative future. Central to this project was his reconceptualization and rearticulation of the long-established term “jāhiliyya.” The following discussion will take Qutb’s conception of jāhiliyya as its point of departure in examining how he grappled with his perception of the larger epistemological crisis facing the Muslim world.

In this work, I argue that the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the devastating civil war that followed was a period of history that defies encapsulation within binaries of “good” and “evil”. This work examines conflicting historical representations of Ahmad Shah Massoud and his role in these two destructive wars. It aims to demystify the image of a warlord.

Why should “they” hate “us”? The very question is on its face absurd, delusional, revealing of an aggregate detachment from reality so virulent in its evasiveness as to be deemed clinically pathological. Setting aside the wholly-contrived “confusion” professed in the aftermath as to who might be properly included under the headings “we” and “they,” the sole legitimate query that might have been posed on 9-1-1 was—and remains—“How could ‘they’ possibly not hate ‘us’?"

In our so-called “post-ideological” world, even the most sincere observers have fallen trap to a myth perpetuated by the liberal order: that strategic political action or realpolitik transcends (or is devoid of) ideology. A case in point is the Tunisian Nahda movement’s decision to separate its political activities (primarily its political party) and its da’wah based activities. In 2016 the Nahda movement announced its shift from an “ideological movement engaged in the struggle for identity, to a protest movement against the authoritarian regime, and now to a national democratic party."

Using the Prophet’s mantle as a case study can shed light on the ways in which Islamic relic veneration encompasses a number of paradoxical relationships, namely the connection between the inaccessible and accessible. As an object at the crossroads of different disciplines and art forms, the Holy Mantle has a far-reaching impact that reveals much about the efficacy of such relics in reaching Muslims globally, especially when they have been translated across verbal channels.

In order to accomplish the mission of the “People’s War on Terror,” the Party Secretary of the university Zhou Xuyong declared that all “static” (zaoyin) and “noise” (zayin) would need to be eliminated. Anyone who demonstrated the slightest resonance with unapproved Islamic ideologies was to be purified through a process of “reverse osmosis” (fan shentou). He said the goal was to create an atmosphere in which Uyghur Islamic “extremists” scurried across the street like rats while the public surrounded them screaming their disapproval and beating them in righteous anger.