Marcel Cardaire’s Figures for the 1952 Hajj
Very belatedly for someone who works on Islam in Africa, I read through parts of Marcel Cardaire’s L’islam et le terroir africain (1954) the other day. I hadn’t had much interest in the book before,...
View ArticleQuick Thoughts on the Cooptation of Peer Review by Think Tanks and Other...
There are numerous, perennial debates over peer review within academia, most of which are above my pay grade. Academic peer review, as currently managed and exercised, has a number of serious problems...
View ArticleA Professional Update and Some Thoughts on the Two-Body Problem in Academia
As of today, August 20, I have a new position – Visiting Assistant Professor at Miami University of Ohio, with a joint appointment in the Department of Political Science and the Department of...
View ArticleA Critical Reading of the Interim Report of the USIP Task Force on Extremism...
The United States Institute of Peace (USIP) recently released a report by its Task Force on Extremism in Fragile States. The report (.pdf) is entitled “Beyond the Homeland: Protecting America from...
View ArticleAmplifying and Extending Martha Crenshaw’s Recommendation for Peace Talks...
In September, Stanford’s Martha Crenshaw – a longtime expert on terrorism – published an essay in Foreign Policy arguing that the time has come for peace talks with al-Qaida and the Islamic State. The...
View ArticleOn Salafism, Tabligh, and Other “Conveyer Belts”
Over at Political Violence at a Glance, Michael Kenney has a post on the idea of “conveyer belt[s] to terrorism.” Kenney is discussing the hardline British group Al-Muhajiroun, whose leader Anjem...
View ArticlePost at Fellow Travelers on Left Foreign Policy
I have a post today at Fellow Travelers, a left foreign policy blog. My post there is different fare than what I usually post here. At Fellow Travelers I look at the question of how a leftist president...
View ArticleA Flawed Estimate of Salafi-Jihadis, and Some of the Politics Surrounding It
This month, the Center for Strategic and International Studies’ Transnational Threats Project released a study entitled “The Evolution of the Salafi-Jihadist Threat.” The study received an uncritical...
View ArticleThoughts on the 2019 AFRICOM Posture Statement
Last week, AFRICOM’s commander, General Thomas Waldhauser, presented the command’s posture statement to the Senate Armed Services Committee. Alexis Arieff and Jason Warner had good threads highlighting...
View ArticleRecurring Definitional Issues Surrounding Salafism, or Why Analysts Are Too...
A quotation: [Part of faith is] that the best of generations is the generation who saw the Messenger of God (SAW) and believed in him, then those who followed them, then those who followed them. The...
View ArticleA Note About Blogging Amid Crisis in My Own Country
As readers are undoubtedly aware, the United States is in crisis – an overt, undeniable crisis that grows directly out of long-term crises that many Americans were and are all too willing to overlook...
View ArticleAnother Perspective on “Local Versus Global” in Analyzing Jihadism:...
Continuing to reflect on the death of Abdelmalek Droukdel, and on this recent thread from Yvan Guichaoua, led me to revisit the debate over whether and how much analysts should privilege “global...
View ArticleFrom the DRC, A Serious Warning for and about Aid Workers Elsewhere
The New Humanitarian last month published the results of their investigation, conducted jointly with the Thomson Reuters Foundation, into a ghastly story involving international aid workers pressuring...
View ArticleMy Review of Ahmed El Shamsy’s Rediscovering the Islamic Classics – at...
At the American Academy of Religion’s Reading Religion site, I have a review up of Ahmed El Shamsy’s Rediscovering the Islamic Classics: How Editors and Print Culture Transformed an Intellectual...
View ArticlePiece for The Maydan on the Contemporary Maliki Madhhab
At George Mason University’s The Maydan, I have a new post looking at present-day dynamics within the Maliki school of Islamic law. An excerpt: Against Salafis’ criticisms of the madhahib and...
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Sahel (and Adjacent Zones) Roundup, Including Some Long Reads
United Nations Development Programme, “Journey to Extremism in Africa: Pathways to Recruitment and Disengagement,” February 2023. This is a follow-up to an impactful and insightful 2017 study that...
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