Sa’diyya Shaikh, “Sufi Narratives of Intimacy: Ibn Arabi, Gender and Sexuality” (University of North Carolina Press, 2012)

Sa’diyya Shaikh, “Sufi Narratives of Intimacy...

Up next

Paul Kohlbry, "Plots and Deeds: Agrarian Annihilation and the Fight for Land Justice in Palestine" (Stanford UP, 2026)

The emancipatory potential and limits of land justice, when land is at once home, property, territory, and homeland. Peasant farming was once an integral part of Palestine's agrarian fabric. But after military occupation of the West Bank in 1967, Israeli land confiscations and ec ...  Show more

Matthew Moran et al., "Coercing Syria on Chemical Weapons" (Oxford UP, 2025)

In 2012, US President Barack Obama stated that the Syrian government’s use of chemical weapons on its population would cross a red line that would require the US government to reconsider its approach to the civil war then underway in Syria. Syria subsequently used such weapons, c ...  Show more

Recommended Episodes

Sa’diyya Shaikh, “Sufi Narratives of Intimacy: Ibn Arabi, Gender and Sexuality” (University of North Carolina Press, 2012)
New Books in Islamic Studies

Many Muslim debates regarding women are solely situated in legal or political frameworks. For example, we often find this tendency in conversations about women’s leadership in the mosque or the politics of veiling. Sa’diyya Shaikh, Professor of Religious Studies at the University ...  Show more

Karen Bauer and Feras Hamza, "An Anthology of Qur'anic Commentaries (vol. 2): On Women" (Oxford UP, 2022)
New Books in Islamic Studies

Karen Bauer and Feras Hamza's co-written book An Anthology of Qur’anic Commentaries (vol. 2): On Women (Oxford UP, 2022) is a collection of historical and contemporary commentaries on the Qur’an. It covers five issues: human creation and the idea of “a single soul”; marital roles ...  Show more

Transgender and Non Binary in Islamic History
Head On History

Continuing our exploration of gender and sexuality in Islamic history we turn to the figure of the mukhannathun, a third gender category in early Islam. We trace ideas of gender as a fluid spectrum through the lives of these individuals examining their existence in the life of Mu ...  Show more

Gender Bending in Islamic History
Head On History

Building upon our exploration of gender in Islamic history we dive into the topic of gender bending and how it can help us see gender as socially constructed, historically contingent, and contextual. We explore multiple figures throughout Islamic history from the ghulamiyya to th ...  Show more