Islam Archives - Public Seminar

Capitalism

Peter Thiel and the Decline of the West

The last priest of a dead faith

September 24, 2025 • by Ahmed Bouzid

In the twilight of the secular Western project, as its elites scramble for a vision to forestall cultural entropy, Peter Thiel has emerged as one of its most articulate and celebrated prophets. In a remarkably candid interview with The New York Times, Thiel laments the stagnation of modern life—not just ...

Interviews

Poetry, Cocktails, and Faith

A conversation with poet Mashnun Munir

February 27, 2023 • by Shaiful Alam and Mashnun Munir

An interview with Mashnun Munir about his debut book Headspun and his experience of growing up in a low-income Muslim community in Orlando....

Democracy

What Are Iranians Dreaming about Today?

Reflections on the Islamic Revolution at 40

August 1, 2019 • by Kian Tajbakhsh

Introduction Almost 20 years ago, I published an article under the title “Political Decentralization and the Creation of Local Government in Iran: Consolidation or Transformation of the Theocratic State?” (Tajbakhsh 2000). The establishment of an elected local government in every city and village in Iran was the most significant institutional innovation ...

Feature

A Wound that Needs Witnessing

Healing after Christchurch

March 20, 2019 • by Safiyah Rochelle

In the aftermath of the slaughter of worshippers in a sacred space, it is easy to be angry. The targets of rage seem endless: at callow politicians who peddle in the most basic of human emotions and sling hateful words that morph into weapons; at white supremacy ideologies whose violences ...

Feature

Vicious Infrastructure

Security dams, military fortresses, and mosques in the “new” Turkey

April 17, 2018 • by Hakan Topal

The Turkish State is building a series of reservoirs alongside the Turkish-Iraqi border, not to produce electricity or to irrigate farms, but to prevent “terrorists” infiltrating from Iraq. At the same time, the state is installing military fortresses, called kalekol in Turkish, within Kurdish towns as a way to assert its powerful ...

Feature

The Myth of the Clash Between Islam and the West Revisited

ISIL, media, and adaptation

September 25, 2017 • by Jad Moawad

For instance, when first putting forward their analysis of the myth of the Clash of Civilizations (Bottici and Challand, 2013) in 2009, Chiara Bottici and Benoît Challand analyzed the first 20 images that appear when the word al-gharb (West) is searched on Google images[1]. Among the findings, 16 out 20 ...

Education

The Clash of Civilizations

From Myth to Reality?

July 31, 2017 • by Nardine Luca

Recently, an Egyptian friend of mine posted on Facebook that an Egyptian friend of his tried to apply for an internship in France. The reply he got was shockingly disappointing and not expected at all. Without mentioning the company’s name, it said: “Thanks for your interest in an internship… I ...

Feature

Have Muslims Replaced Jews as the Other of the Twenty-First Century?

An excerpt from ‘Modernity and the Jews in Western Social Thought’

June 19, 2017 • by Chad Alan Goldberg

The rise of Muslims as a prominent ethnoreligious minority in Western Europe and the United States raises a pertinent question for this study: Have they taken the position formerly occupied by Jews as a foil for the construction of modern European and American identities? Numerous scholars have suggested such a ...

Have Muslims Replaced Jews as the Other of the Twenty-First Century?

Feature

White European Women’s Rights

France’s Paradoxical Women’s Liberation

March 1, 2017 • by Hannah Leffingwell

While Clinton ran on the notion that “women’s rights are human rights,” Le Pen’s slogan might best be summed up as “women’s rights are white European women’s rights.” Employing xenophobic rhetoric all too familiar to Americans under the Trump administration, Le Pen has become the face of contemporary French nationalism, ...

Feature

Global Studies at The New School on the Executive Order banning Refugees

A Personal Message from the Chair

January 31, 2017 • by Jonathan Bach

The President’s executive order from January 27, 2017 barred entry to whole populations from select countries to the United States (initially including U.S. legal permanent residents). It is a watershed in post-World War II U.S. policy and history and a turning point in U.S. relations with the world. It must ...

Good Luck for America

Thoughts on a Trump America from a Muslim Woman

December 17, 2016 • by Anum Nawaz

“Good luck for your stay in America” I heard. “I will be safe!“ They heard. “You never know, if Trump gets elected” came the reply. “Oh well, then I guess I will be back sooner,” said I. And we all laughed. It’s hard to believe that a political joke enjoyed just 4 months ago, turned ...

Uncategorized

Islam and “the Sword”

December 13, 2015 • by Eli Zaretsky

Ross Douthat has an uncharacteristically ignorant post on Islam in yesterday’s New York Times. Douthat wants to contest the Trumpists in his own party that identify Islam with violence. He argues that there is a place for Islam in the modern world, as another religion, but -- he concludes -- “it has ...