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Articles by Faisal Devji
How 9/11 Helped Shape Our Politics Today Original
From the moment they occurred, the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 were seen as inaugurating a new age of asymmetric violence and warfare. President George W. Bush described the war on terror that followed as a generational conflict. Yet, for all the transformations it produced, Al-Qaedaand Islamic militancy more broadly have, in my view,receded within a decade. Not so much because it was defeated on the battlefield but because it was unable to gain much support among Muslims.
After the Party: What India's Student Protests Reveal About Politics
The recent student protests in Delhi and other Indian cities were part of national as well as global history. In national terms they belong to a genealogy of mobilisation going back to the India Against Corruption movement of 2011, in which several of today’s student leaders cut their political teeth, followed by the anti-CAA protests of 2019 and the farmers’ protests of 2020-21.
A Baghdad Pact Style Arrangement to Unite Arab States
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Beyond Global Islam: Faisal Devji on the Crisis of Modern Muslim Sovereignty and the Fall of Khamenei
Soon after the joint US-Israeli strikes on Iran on February 28, which eventually led to the killing of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, US Congresswoman Ilhan Omar criticised the action on her X account, remarking that the US “apparently loves to strike Muslim countries during Ramadan”. Implicit in her framing is the portrayal of “Muslim countries” exclusively as victims of a non-Muslim US/West.
Is Islamism Waning? – Mustafa Akyol
Islamism as a political force may be declining. At least, that is one takeaway from Faisal Devji—one of the most astute observers of modern Islam—in his new book, Waning Crescent: The Rise and Fall of Global Islam.
The changing concept of term 'Islam' through ages
New Delhi The conceptualisation of Islam has shifted across historical contexts. Islam can be understood in multiple ways—civilisationally, ideologically, or as a form of identity. This argument was advanced by Oxford scholar Faisal Devji during a public lecture in New Delhi, based on his latest book, Waning Crescent: The Rise and Fall of Global Islam.
Waning Crescent: The Rise and Fall of Global Islam
In this brilliant book, Devji argues that in the late nineteenth century, Islam ceased to be primarily a religious movement concerned with scripture or the divine. Instead, it transformed into an ideological system—like capitalism or communism. Questions about God were sidelined. The Prophet Muhammad was refashioned not as the bearer of revelation but as an agent of history. But at the same time, Muslims came to see their faith as a victim, under permanent siege.
The End of Islam Original
THE TITLE I INITIALLY gave my forthcoming book was ‘The End of Islam’. I chose it not only to be provocative but because I was interested in how Muslims have in modern times envisioned the end of Islam in both of its senses. The first was as a victorious goal to be achieved on a global stage, and the second as an equally global defeat. Both these meanings make sense only when we understand Islam to be an actor in global history.
The Bandung Conference's Lessons for Middle Powers and BRICS Today
Europe Africa In recent years, the Western public discussion has been full of laments over the collapse of the so-called rules-based international order established in the aftermath of World War II. Some blame Russian President Vladimir Putin; others blame U.S. President Donald Trump or Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Indeed, all these individuals have contributed significantly to the disintegration of the global order.
Trump is building a new American empire
Story continues below this ad It is only now dawning on European politicians that the most serious threat the West faces as a geo-political actor is neither Russia’s army nor China’s economy. Even Muslims and migrants, long the favourite internal enemies of Europe’s populists, pale in insignificance before the external threat posed by US policy on Russia and Ukraine, Canada and Mexico, and on Europe’s military and economic status.
Comentaris/ Commentaries
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Revisiting Muslim Zion
Editor’s note: Recently, a review of Faisal Devji’s groundbreaking workMuslim Zion was published in the Pakistani media. We are publishing his response which not only addresses the book review but expands and elevates the key arguments made in that study. I was bemused to see that Dawn ran a review of my book, Muslim Zion, on the 10th of September, despite it having been published nearly a decade ago.
Escaping the Global Event: Pan-Islam and the First World War
The story we usually tell about Islam in the First World War has to do with the Ottoman Empire's entry into it galvanizing pan-Islamic sentiment around the globe. No more so than in British India, home to the world's largest Muslim population, which had also provided a disproportionate number of troops for the war's prosecution.
What the stalemates in Ukraine, Gaza mean for the US - and its place in the world
Critics of the Joe Biden administration routinely contrast the wars in Ukraine and Gaza, accusing the US of double standards in condemning Russian, but not Israeli attacks on civilians. What is striking about these conflicts, however, is not how differently Washington has been handling them but how similarly. In both cases, America opted for war rather than negotiations, leading its Western allies in supplying arms, funding, and diplomatic cover to Ukraine and Israel.
Ukraine, Gaza, and the International Order
The ongoing crises in Ukraine and Gaza show the urgent need for a new internationalism that comes to grips with the increasing independence of middle and smaller powers around the world. Such a vision must reject the effort to re-impose a failed framework of unilateral U.S. primacy, or an effort to shoehorn multiplying regionally specific conflicts into an obsolete model of “great power competition” that recalls the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union.
The Ukraine War’s Impact Extends Far Beyond Europe
Whether Russia is defeated or not, the way in which this war has divided the world tells us that it is likely to further underpin the trend towards a more multipolar international order. Conflicts like the war in Ukraine can only be absorbed into strategic thinking by being understood in terms of historical patterns. But these narratives sometimes tell us more about those who invoke them than they do about the past. All sides in this war, for instance, share the same historical references.
What western liberals get wrong about the attack on Salman Rushdie
The brutal attack on novelist Salman Rushdie at a public lecture in Chautauqua, New York, in August prompted a flood of revealing responses from liberals in the West. In the New Yorker, the writer Adam Gopnik decried the enduring “terrorist” threat to “liberal civilization” in rhetoric that might well have been issued by the administration of former US president George W Bush.
Salman Rushdie and the Neoliberal Culture Wars
The brutal attack on novelist Salman Rushdie at a public lecture in Chautauqua, New York, last month has prompted a flood of revealing responses from liberals in the West. In the New Yorker, Adam Gopnik decried the enduring “terrorist” threat to “liberal civilization” in rhetoric that might well have been issued by the administration of George W. Bush.
What Freedom Meant for Gandhi
As the country waves flags and celebrates the 75th anniversary of India’s independence, it is also time to take stock. What did India’s founders and citizens dream of, how has India fared, what have been our challenges and successes? The Wire’s reporters and contributors bring stories of the period, of the traumas but also the hopes of Indians, as seen in personal accounts, in culture, in the economy and in the sciences. How did the modern state of India come about, what does the flag represent?
How Crucial a Factor Was Race in Rishi Sunak’s Rise?
Rishi Sunak’s political ascent has let loose an avalanche of commentary about the appointment of Britain’s first non-white prime minister. Whether expressed in tones of surprise, suspicion, or celebration, such reflections on the precedent set by Sunak take race to be its crucial feature. But this clarity is deceptive, since everything else about the man remains hazy.
Losing the Present to History
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History and the Present
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Jinnah and the Theatre of Politics
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50 Years of the Liberation of Bangladesh
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End of the Postcolonial State
Much of the scholarship on Bangladesh’s founding places it within a narrative of repetition. It either repeats the partitions of 1905 or 1947 or the creation of India and Pakistan as postcolonial states. This paper argues instead for the novelty of Bangladesh’s creation against the postcolonial state, suggesting that it opened up a new history at the global level in which decolonisation was replaced by civil war as the founding narrative for new states.
Will Spread of Western Civilization Prove Suicidal?
When asked what he thought of Western civilisation, Gandhi apparently responded that he thought it would be a good idea. While this celebrated statement is taken to be an ironic dismissal, Gandhi had in fact given the matter of Western civilisation much thought. In his manifesto of 1909 called Hind Swaraj or ‘Indian Home Rule’, the future Mahatma had described imperial Britain’s desire to spread Western civilisation not as hypocritical so much as suicidal.
The idea of the West has always been in motion and in crisis
When asked what he thought of Western civilisation, Gandhi apparently responded that he thought it would be a good idea. While this celebrated statement is taken to be an ironic dismissal, Gandhi had in fact given the matter of Western civilisation much thought. In his manifesto of 1909 called Hind Swaraj or ‘Indian Home Rule’, the future Mahatma had described imperial Britain’s desire to spread Western civilisation not as hypocritical so much as suicidal.
In Second Regime, Both the Taliban and the World Face a New Reality
The key to Afghanistan’s future may lie in deglobalizing its importance Most accounts of the Taliban’s emergence in the 1990s attribute it to a Saudi-funded and Pakistani-led project. Its aim was to create an Islamic state in Afghanistan after the Soviet withdrawal, one that would keep Iran at bay for the Saudis and India for the Pakistanis.
The Violent Logic of Humanitarianism
U.S. soldier talks to children while on patrol in Afghanistan in 2011. (Image Credit: Flickr) The U.S. occupation of Afghanistan sacrificed politics—the only viable route to peace—for massive corruption and violence. “The idea that we’re able to deal with the rights of women around the world by military force is not rational.” This single sentence from President Biden’s ABC interview with George Stephanopoulos on August 18 exposed the paradox of humanitarian intervention.
Slave Rebellions and Mutinies Shaped the Age of Revolution
Apr 23, 2021 18 Min read time Nèg Mawon/Le Marron Inconnu statue in Port-au-Prince / Image: Amy Nelson Several recent books offer a more complete, bottom-up picture of the role sailors and Black political actors played in making the Atlantic world. The Common Wind: Afro-American Currents in the Age of the Haitian Revolution Julius S.
From Revolution to Reformism
Image: French President François Mitterrand (second from right), leader of the French socialist party, with Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan, and Helmut Schmidt at the Versailles G7 Summit of 1982. Leaders of the left abandoned the language of transformation in the 1980s—at a cost. Can it be regained? Editors’ Note: This is an adapted chapter from a forthcoming book, Market Economies, Market Societies: Interviews and Essays on the Decline of Social Democracy, published by Phenomenal World.
The People on the Beach
On a cold and blustery day, I walk up the road to the Israeli hilltop village of Karmei Yosef. The journey that has brought me here has taken two years. I am on my way to meet Dani Chanoch, a Holocaust survivor. But I am here not just to understand the horrors of the ghettos and concentration camps, but also to learn of the struggle for survival after liberation.
Seeing India, Pak history through the lens of caste
Written by Faisal Devji | December 27, 2020 2:18:40 am Getting ready for Ambedkar Jayanti in Gulbarga, Karnataka. Archive We see caste as a problem, not as an analytical category. It is the object of analysis but never its subject. Scholarship on India’s history includes caste as one element, with class and community comprising other categories. What would the history of India look like if seen through the lens of caste?
Repertoires of Rage
The Cyclops Polyphemus by Annibale Carracci Anger’s history—along with the very fact that it has one—can shed light on the hypertrophied emotional climate of today. Anger, like other emotions, has a history. It is not merely that the causes of anger may change, or attitudes toward its expression. The nature of the emotion itself may alter from one society to another.
The Virtue in Violence
JULY 17, 2020 NONVIOLENCE, CLAIMS JUDITH BUTLER, echoing the views of virtually all its theorists and practitioners, is neither a virtue born out of weakness nor an unrealistic ideal, but something that exists even in the exertion of force. As M. K.
Ilhan Omar: On the Pluralisation of Black Identity and Politics
George Floyd’s killing and the protests that followed it are being described as the latest episode in a centuries-old history of racial conflict. Both anti-racists and white supremacists, for very different reasons, concur in this vision of a race war where blacks and whites are the rival protagonists. True as this account may be when viewed in the long run, there is something different about the present situation.
Celebrity Academics
In the neoliberal 1990s Hollywood became the model for elite American universities. Celebrity academics, paid much more than their colleagues in secretive deals, were part of a financing formula that included large capital projects like recreational facilities, satellite campuses and terms abroad. Matched by astronomical student fees, this marketisation of higher education lured students by promising exclusive access to luxury, networking and brand names as much as an education.
Fever-Detecting Drones Don’t Work
Featured image: Police personnel in Jaipur during the lockdown as a drone flies above them. Photo: PTI Since the pandemic began, authorities in New Delhi, Italy, Oman, Connecticut, and China have begun to experiment with fever-finding drones as a means of mass COVID-19 screening. They’re claiming the aircraft can be used to better understand the health of the population at large and even to identify potentially sick individuals, who can then be pulled aside for further diagnostic testing.
Gandhi Against the Human Race
THE LANGUAGE OF anti-colonialism has historically been dominated by a desire to acknowledge the humanity and therefore equality of all peoples, its critique often turning on the threat imperialism posed to the lives of its subjects. Even those labelled by colonial powers as revolutionaries and terrorists, after all, tended to excuse their violence as temporary and dedicated it to recovering the equal value of all human lives.
Gandhi’s racism: It’s time for the Mahatma to become a properly historical figure with all his flaws
Oct 28, 2019 · 06:30 am Faisal Devji Share Tweet Email Reddit Print Share Tweet Email Reddit Print If the memory of Mahatma Gandhi lives on today, then it is mainly thanks to his enemies, who seem unable to forget him. The Mahatma’s followers, on the other hand, have turned him into a saint whose teachings can safely be ignored as the words of a superior being to be admired from afar.
Mahatma Gandhi 150th birth anniversary: Gandhi and the Gita
Mahatma Gandhi put into practice teachings from the Gita in his own moral and political actions Gandhi often thought about the nature of moral and political action through his reading of the Bhagavad-Gita. For him Krishna’s advice to Arjuna emphasised the superiority of duty over choice in defining such action. Arjuna’s horror at killing his friends, relations and preceptors in the army of his enemies, and his desire to flee the battlefield, were rejected by Krishna as futile.
Gandhi's enemies
If Gandhi lives today it is because of his enemies, who seem unable to let go of his memory. The Mahatma's followers have turned him into a saint whose teachings can safely be ignored-as the words of a superior being to be admired from afar. Given the ritualistic respect offered to him in India and received with public indifference, it is puzzling why Gandhi remains such a living figure for his critics. Perhaps they are the only ones who still feel betrayed by his loss of sainthood.
An Indian History of Tolerance
During a lecture some years ago in Vienna, the philosopher Charles Taylor remarked upon the fact that tolerance seems to have become a bad word in our day. This might be the case, he suggested, because it often implies a hierarchical and majoritarian form of sufferance, rather than the full and equal recognition of difference that democracy demands.
The search for a ‘majority’
Since elections were grudgingly introduced to India under British rule, they have put into question the existence of a nation. The British denied the reality of such a nation by pointing to India’s rivalrous diversities of caste, creed and culture, and introduced separate electorates for religious groups. Indian politics is still informed by an anxiety to define and maintain a national identity.
National Identity Is a Political Project. Turning That Into a Religious Endeavour Does Not Work
In this essay Faisal Devji, a Professor of Indian History at University of Oxford responds to a paper by Venkat Dhulipala author Creating a New Medina: State Power, Islam, and the Quest for Pakistan in Late Colonial North India. Devji defends his arguments that he presented in his seminal study Muslim Zion: Pakistan as a Political Idea that explores the origins of Pakistan, comparing its birth in 1947 with that of Israel in 1948.
Opinion | How Caste Underpins the Blasphemy Crisis in Pakistan
Caste discrimination against Christians, whose ancestors were lower-caste Hindus, persists in the country. By Faisal Devji Mr. Devji teaches history at Oxford University. Dec. 18, 2018 Image Working on Christmas decorations at St. Anthony Church in Lahore, Pakistan. A recent blasphemy case against a Christian has undercurrents of caste discrimination.
Destroyed by Truth
NOVEMBER 7, 2018 OVER THE PAST DECADE, interest in Gandhi has grown among scholars as well as activists. But this time it has not been the Mahatma’s nonviolent struggle for his country’s freedom that has commanded attention. Instead, it is because imperialism has ceased to be a burning issue, and the post-colonial state seen as having betrayed its promise, that another aspect of Gandhi’s legacy has come to the fore.
Jamal Khashoggi and the Competing Visions of Islam
Jamal Khashoggi and the Competing Visions of Islam
Opinion | Jamal Khashoggi and the Competing Visions of Islam
Jamal Khashoggi’s murder by Saudi agents in Istanbul doesn’t just cast a harsh light on the authoritarian and reckless behavior of Prince Mohamad bin Salman of Saudi Arabia; it also highlights the rivalry between Turkey and Saudi Arabia, which represent competing forms of Islam. Saudi Arabia is a monarchy that allows Islam to define all social relations as long as it makes no political claims.
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