Faisal Devji

Last updated

Faisal Devji
Born1964  OOjs UI icon edit-ltr-progressive.svg (age 59)
Alma mater
Occupation Author, historian, journalist, writer   OOjs UI icon edit-ltr-progressive.svg
Employer

Faisal Devji is a historian who specializes in studies of Islam, globalization, violence and ethics.

Contents

Early life and education

Devji was born in Dar es Salaam in 1964 to a family of western Indian origin. His undergraduate education was at the University of British Columbia, where he received double honors in history and anthropology. He received his PhD from the University of Chicago with his dissertation Muslim Nationalism: Founding Identity in Colonial India and was chosen to be a Junior Fellow at the Harvard Society of Fellows.

Devji is Zanzibari, and is now a Canadian citizen.

Career

Devji's multidisciplinary work grounds empirical historical issues in philosophical questions. He has taught at The New School in New York City. [1] He has taught at Yale University.

In 2005, Cornell University Press published his Landscapes of the Jihad: Militancy, Morality, Modernity, exploring the ethical content of jihad as opposed to its more widely studied purported political content. The book draws a distinction between the majority of Islamic fundamentalist organizations concerned with the establishing of states and al-Qaeda with its decentralized structure and emphasis on moral rather than political action. His next book was The Terrorist in Search of Humanity: Militant Islam and Global Politics, published by Columbia University Press in October 2008.

Since 2009, Devji is University Reader in Modern South Asian History, Oxford University. He also is a senior fellow at the Institute for Public Knowledge (New York University) [2] and Yves Oltramar Chair at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva. [2]

He published The Impossible Indian: Gandhi and the Temptations of Violence, by Hurst & Co. in March 2011.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Salafi movement</span> Sunni Islamic reform movement

The Salafi movement or Salafism is a reform branch movement within Sunni Islam that originated during the nineteenth century. The name refers to advocacy of a return to the traditions of the "pious predecessors", the first three generations of Muslims, who are believed to exemplify the pure form of Islam. Those generations include the Islamic prophet Muhammad and his companions, whom he himself taught ; their successors ; and the successors of the successors. In practice, Salafis maintain that Muslims ought to rely on the Qur'an, the Sunnah and the 'Ijma (consensus) of the salaf, giving these writings precedence over later religious interpretations. The Salafi movement aimed to achieve a renewal of Muslim life and had a major influence on many Muslim thinkers and movements across the Islamic world. Since its inception, Salafism has been evolving through the efforts of numerous Islamic reformers, whose interpretations have spread within various regions.

Eqbal Ahmad was a Pakistani political scientist, writer and academic known for his anti-war activism, his support for resistance movements globally and academic contributions to the study of the Near East. Born in Bihar, British India, Ahmad migrated to Pakistan as a child and went on to study economics at the Forman Christian College. After graduating, he worked briefly as an army officer and was wounded in the First Kashmir War in 1948. He participated in the Algerian Revolution, then studied the Vietnam War and U.S. imperialism, becoming an early opponent of the war upon his return to the U.S. in the mid-1960s.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Laskar Jihad</span> Indonesian paramilitary group

Laskar Jihad was an Islamist and anti-Christian Indonesian militia, which was founded and led by Jafar Umar Thalib. At present, the militia is believed to have disbanded.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jagdish Bhagwati</span> Indian-born naturalized American economist

Jagdish Natwarlal Bhagwati is an Indian-born naturalized American economist and one of the most influential trade theorists of his generation. He is a University Professor of economics and law at Columbia University and a Senior Fellow in International Economics at the Council on Foreign Relations. He has made significant contributions to international trade theory and economic development.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gilles Kepel</span> French political scientist and Arabist (born 1955)

Gilles Kepel, is a French political scientist and Arabist, specialized in the contemporary Middle East and Muslims in the West. Considered as one of the world’s leading authorities on Political Islam and the Middle East, he is Professor at Sciences Po Paris, the Université Paris Sciences et Lettres (PSL) and director of the Middle East and Mediterranean Program at PSL, based at Ecole Normale Supérieure. His latest english-translated book, Away from Chaos. The Middle East and the Challenge to the West was reviewed by The New York Times as “an excellent primer for anyone wanting to get up to speed on the region”. His last essay, le Prophète et la Pandémie / du Moyen-Orient au jihadisme d'atmosphère, just released in French, has topped the best-seller lists and is currently being translated into English and a half-dozen languages. The excerpt The Murder of Samuel Paty is presently released in the Issue 3 of Liberties Journal.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ayesha Jalal</span> Pakistani historian (born 1956)

Ayesha Jalal is a Pakistani-American historian who serves as the Mary Richardson Professor of History at Tufts University, and was the recipient of the 1998 MacArthur Foundation Fellowship.

Muhammad b. al-Haj Nuh b. Nijati b. Adam al-Ishqudri al-Albani al-Arnauti, better known simply as Al-Albani, was an Albanian-born Islamic scholar and watchmaker, who in particular was a famous Salafi hadith scholar. A major figure of the Salafi methodology of Islam, he established his reputation in Syria, where his family had moved and where he was educated as a child.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Olivier Roy (political scientist)</span> French political scientist

Olivier Roy is a French political scientist, professor at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy. He has published articles and books on secularisation and Islam including "Global Islam", and The Failure of Political Islam. He is known to have "a different view of radical Islam" than some other experts, seeing it as peripheral, Westernized and part of a radicalized and "virtual" rather than pious and "actual" Muslim community. More recently he has written on the Charlie Hebdo shooting, and the November 2015 Paris attacks.

Jihadism is a neologism which is used in reference to "militant Islamic movements that are perceived as existentially threatening to the West" and "rooted in political Islam." Appearing earlier in the Pakistani and Indian media, Western journalists adopted the term in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks of 2001. Since then, it has been applied to various insurgent Islamic extremist, militant Islamist, and terrorist individuals and organizations whose ideologies are based on the Islamic notion of jihad. It has also been applied to various Islamic empires in history, such as the Umayyad Caliphate and the Ottoman Empire, who extensively campaigned against non-Muslim nations in the name of jihad.

Roy Parviz Mottahedeh is an American historian who is Gurney Professor of History, Emeritus at Harvard University, where he taught courses on the pre-modern social and intellectual history of the Islamic Middle East and is an expert on Iranian culture. Mottahedeh served as the director of Harvard's Center for Middle Eastern Studies from 1987 to 1990, and as the inaugural director of the Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Islamic Studies Program at Harvard University from 2005 to 2011. He is a follower of the Baha'i faith.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Islamic extremism</span> Extreme or radical form of Islam

Islamic extremism, Islamist extremism, or radical Islam, is used in reference to extremist beliefs and behaviors which are associated with the Islamic religion. These are controversial terms with varying definitions, ranging from academic understandings to the idea that all ideologies other than Islam have failed and are inferior to Islam. These terms can also be used in reference to other sects of Islam that do not share such beliefs. Political definitions of Islamic extremism include the one which is used by the government of the United Kingdom, which understands Islamic extremism as any form of Islam that opposes "democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty and mutual respect and tolerance of different faiths and beliefs". In 2019, the U.S. Institute for Peace released an important report on extremism in fragile states that developed recommendations focused on adopting a shared understanding, operationalize a prevention framework, and rallying the international community.

David Charles Rapoport is a Professor Emeritus of Political Science at University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) who focuses on the study of terrorism.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mark Juergensmeyer</span> American sociologist (born 1940)

Mark Juergensmeyer is an American sociologist and scholar specialized in global studies and religious studies, and a writer best known for his studies on comparative religion, religious violence, and global religion. He is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Sociology and Global Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and William F. Podlich Distinguished Fellow and Professor of Religious Studies at Claremont McKenna College.

Matthew Levitt is the Fromer-Wexler Fellow and director of the Jeanette and Eli Reinhard Program on Counterterrorism and Intelligence at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and an adjunct professor in Georgetown University's Center for Security Studies (CSS). From 2005 to early 2007 he was a deputy assistant secretary for intelligence and analysis at the U.S. Department of the Treasury. In that capacity, he served both as a senior official within the department's terrorism and financial intelligence branch and as deputy chief of the Office of Intelligence and Analysis. From 2001 to 2005, Levitt served the Institute as founding director of its Terrorism Research Program, which was established in the wake of the September 11 attacks. Previously, he provided tactical and strategic analytical support for counter-terrorism operations at the FBI, focusing on fundraising and logistical support networks for Middle Eastern terrorist groups. During his FBI service, Levitt participated as a team member in a number of crisis situations, including the terrorist threat surrounding the turn of the millennium and the September 11 attacks.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Akbar Ahmed</span> Pakistani-American academic and former diplomat

Akbar Salahuddin Ahmed, is a Pakistani-American academic, author, poet, playwright, filmmaker and former diplomat. He currently is a professor of International Relations and holds the Ibn Khaldun Chair of Islamic Studies at the American University, School of International Service in Washington, D.C. Akbar Ahmed served as the Pakistan High Commissioner to the UK and Ireland. He currently is a Global Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center.

Tariq Rahman is a Pakistani academic scholar, newspaper columnist, researcher, and a writer.

The Pakistani textbooks controversy refers to claimed inaccuracies and historical denialism. The inaccuracies and myths promote religious intolerance and Indophobia and lead to calls for curriculum reform. According to the Sustainable Development Policy Institute, Pakistan's school textbooks have systematically inculcated anti-Indian discrimination through historical omissions and deliberate misinformation since the 1970s.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Christophe Jaffrelot</span> French political scientist (born 1964)

Christophe Jaffrelot is a French political scientist and Indologist specialising in South Asia, particularly India and Pakistan. He is a professor of South Asian politics and history the Centre d'études et de recherches internationales (CERI) at Sciences Po (Paris), a professor of Indian Politics and Sociology at the King's India Institute (London), and a Research Director at the Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS).

Natana J. DeLong-Bas is an American academic, scholar of Middle Eastern and Islamic studies, and author of a number of academic publications on Islam on the subjects of Saudi Arabia and Wahhabism, Islamic thought and history, Islam and politics, and contemporary jihadism.

Dinesh J. Sharma is an American social scientist, psychologist, academic and entrepreneur in the fields of human development and rights, leadership and globalization; his recent publications include, “The Global Obama: Crossroads of Leadership in the 21st Century” and most recently “The Global Hillary: Women's Political Leadership in Cultural Context."

References

  1. "The ideas interview: Faisal Devji". The Guardian. 9 May 2006.
  2. 1 2 "People – St Antony's College". www.sant.ox.ac.uk. Retrieved 15 August 2017.