In this episode, Hizer Mir and Chella Ward talked to Ðermana Kuric about Bosnia and Muslimness, focussing on the ways the history of Muslimness in Bosnia interacts with current identities and practices. Ðermana is a researcher whose work concerns hate crime and discrimination in relation to Muslims in Europe. This episode is one of our ‘Forgotten Ummah’ episodes where we consider Muslimness in places outside of those traditional considered to be Muslim.
Apr 14, 2025•54 min
In this episode of Radio ReOrient, Claudia Radiven and Chella Ward spoke to Adi Saleem and Shanon Shah. They discussed the recent publication of the book Queer Muslims, Queer Jews: Race, Religion, and Representation (Wayne State UP, 2024) that Adi edited and Shannon contributed a chapter. Adi is an assistant professor at the University of Michigan with a focus on the intersection of race and religion, particularly in relation to Jews and Muslims. Shannon is a Visiting Research Fellow at the Depa...
Apr 07, 2025•1 hr 3 min
In this episode, Chella Ward and Hizer Mir spoke to Leila Abdelrazaq about her artistic practice and its themes of Palestinian futurism. Their discussion centred on Leila’s artistic work, and probed the role that reimagining the past can play in a more just future. Leila Abdelrazaq is a Chicago-born Palestinian artist and cultural organizer whose debut graphic novel ‘Baddawi’ was published in 2015.
Apr 01, 2025•50 min
In this episode of Radio ReOrient, Claudia Radiven and Saeed Khan spoke to Dr Yunis Alam about cars, class and race. They discussed the role that cars play in signifying meaning in terms of status, wealth and taste. These conversations extended to the racialization of car culture in cities like Bradford (UK) and the relationship to criminalization of Muslims. Yunis is Head of Department of Sociology and Criminology, at the University of Bradford. He has particular interests in public sociology, ...
Mar 25, 2025•55 min
In this episode of Radio ReOrient, Salman Sayyid and Chella Ward spoke to Professor Marc Van De Mieroop about Sumerian history. They discussed the role that the so-called ‘Ancient Near East’ might play in reorienting history, from redefining the history of philosophy to telling a less Eurocentric story about writing and textual evidence. Marc is Professor of the Ancient Near East from the beginning of writing to the age of Alexander of Macedon, at Columbia University. His many important books an...
Mar 19, 2025•1 hr 7 min
In this episode Saeed Khan and Hizer Mir take a trip to Muslim Sicily, via a new book edited by Nuha Alshaar. They are also joined for this conversation by Shainool Jiwa, one of the authors whose work is featured in this edited volume. They discuss the period from around 800 CE to the mid-13th century, one characterised by a large Muslim presence which still exerts an important, though sometimes forgotten, influence on the present. This episode is one of our Forgotten Ummah episodes, where we di...
Mar 10, 2025•49 min
In this episode, Saeed Khan and Chella Ward sat down with Dr Aliyah Khan to discuss Muslimness in the Caribbean, drawing on Aliyah’s book Far From Mecca and ongoing important work in this area. This wide-ranging conversation covers decolonial solidarities and neglected histories, and is part of our Forgotten Ummah series, where we investigate Muslimness in places outside of the Middle East and North Africa region in an attempt to ReOrient the normative geography of Muslimness.
Mar 10, 2025•49 min
In this episode, Chella Ward and Salman Sayyid talked to Adnan Husain about some of the challenges involved in reorienting history. We spoke about the opportunities and limitations of the idea of ‘the global’ as a way of organising history, and explored the relationship between the global and the decolonial. Adnan Husain is a Medieval European and Middle Eastern historian at Queen’s University, Canada. He has a particular interest in the relationship between Muslims, Jews and Christians in the m...
Feb 24, 2025•1 hr 11 min
In this episode Chella Ward and Salman Sayyid talked to Professor Priyamvada Gopal, Professor of Postcolonial Studies at the University of Cambridge. We talked about her important work on anticolonial resistance, about the importance of the literary in imagining liberation, and about the relationship between the Muslim and the decolonial – and also had the opportunity to hear about some of her upcoming work. This episode is the first in our series on ReOrienting History.
Feb 18, 2025•55 min
This podcast features Ammar Rashid, a leading figure in leftwing politics in Pakistan, and currently Director of the action-research organization Alliance for Urban Rights, and Research Lead at the public health think tank, Heartfile. This episode of Radio ReOrient is hosted by Sher Ali Tareen, Shehla Khan and Salman Sayyid. The conversation explores the lengthening political crisis in Pakistan by foregrounding the potential for resistance. In this vein, it ranges across several salient themes, ...
Dec 20, 2024•1 hr 3 min
Islamophobia Awareness Month Special Episode In this interview, recorded for Islamophobia Awareness Month, Hizer Mir and Chella Ward talk to Kawtar Najib and Rayan Freschi about Islamophobia in France. They discuss why France is a special case and how its policies of ‘systematic obstruction’ hinder the lives of Muslims and contribute to global Islamophobia.
Nov 08, 2024•1 hr 4 min
In this final episode of Season 11, the Radio ReOrient team - Hizer Mir, Claudia Radiven, Saeed Khan, Chella Ward and Salman Sayyid - look back over our discussions this season. We put these into the context in which the conversations took place: the context of the genocide of the Palestinians in Gaza and the Occupied Territories, of global Islamophobia, of campus movements and protests for decolonial liberation… and much more. We reflect on the value of the literary, which has been a thread thr...
Aug 29, 2024•38 min
In this episode Salman Sayyid talks to Ian Almond about his work in world literature, including his 2021 book World Literature Decentered which looks at literature beyond the idea of the West. Ian is professor of World Literature at Georgetown University, whose work asks what it would mean to do literary study that embraces the non-West not as a residual category, but as the majority of the world. The interview connects up this work with Ian’s earlier work on dismantling Eurocentrism, and asks b...
Aug 22, 2024•1 hr 16 min
This episode is the third one this series where we look back over the first principles of the ReOrient project. In previous episodes we have discussed post-orientalism and post-positivism, here we turn to decoloniality. Discussions of decoloniality have become increasingly mainstream since the ‘Decolonise the Curriculum’ and ‘Rhodes Must Fall’ movements, and calls to decolonise are often heard on pro-Palestine marches around the world. But what is the relationship between the decolonial and the ...
Aug 15, 2024•35 min
In this episode Salman Sayyid talks to Haiyun Ma about Muslimness in China. This is the second episode in this series which addresses this topic: in a previous episode we spoke to Darren Byler about Uyghur Muslims in East Turkestan. In this episode, our focus is slightly different, and encompasses many Muslim groups in China. Haiyun Ma, assistant professor at Frostburg State University, tells us about his career and his interests in Islam and Muslims in Chinese history. This episode is one of ou...
Aug 08, 2024•59 min
In the first episode of this new series, Salman Sayyid and Haroon Bashir talk with Kelly Hammond about her new book. Her book explores how the geopolitical rivalries between China and Japan created opportunities for Muslim Chinese to articulate their Muslimness politically and culturally.
Aug 05, 2024•39 min
This episode is the first of two episodes this season on Muslims in China. Here Claudia Radiven and Chella Ward talk to Darren Byler about his book Terror Capitalism:Dispossession and Masculinity in a Chinese City. Darren is a sociocultural anthropologist at Simon Fraser University, whose book explores how islamophobia and capitalism contribute to the violence against Uyghur Muslims in East Turkestan. Our conversation spans the history of China, the question of global Islamophobia and the import...
Aug 01, 2024•56 min
Persevering with our literary theme this season, in this episode Claudia Radiven and Chella Ward chat to A. M. Dassu about her books for young readers. Az is a children’s author of fiction and non-fiction, whose books include Fight Back and Boy, Everywhere. Her books engage young readers with themes of migration, activism and political solidarity, and she often writes Muslim characters whose Muslimness is more than simply an aspect of their culture or heritage but plays an important role in thei...
Jul 26, 2024•54 min•Season 11Ep. 7
In this episode of Radio ReOrient, we return to the literary theme of this season, to explore the work of Laury Silvers. Laury is the author of many successful book series set in the past and present of the Islamicate, including her Sufi Mysteries Quartet set in 10th Century Baghdad. In this interview she tells Saeed Khan and Salman Sayyid about her work, about the way that orientalism structures so many representations of Muslims and Muslim societies, and about how important it is for Muslims t...
Jul 18, 2024•1 hr 9 min•Season 11Ep. 6
In this episode Hizer Mir and his co-author Sahar Ghumkhor talk to Shareef Muhammad about the phenomenon of Muslims in the Manosphere. Shareef is a scholar of history based in Atlanta, Georgia, who works on Muslims, race and third worldism - especially the experience of Black Muslims in the context of imperial America. This interview results from an article Sahar and Hizer wrote about the Muslim Manosphere, which observes the behaviour of Muslim men in alt right online spaces. Together with Shar...
Jul 12, 2024•1 hr 14 min•Season 11Ep. 5
In this episode we celebrate the release of a special issue of the ReOrient journal, ‘Hindutva and the Muslim Subject’, edited by Sheheen Kattiparambil. Shvetal Vyas Pare and Sheheen sat down to discuss the special issue, introducing what Hindutva is and how it relates to global projects of Islamophobia within and beyond India (including Tel Aviv’s genocide in Palestine). ‘Hindutva and the Muslim Subject’ is issue 8.2 of ReOrient, and is available freely via open access from Pluto Journals here....
Jul 05, 2024•39 min•Season 11Ep. 4
The third episode of this season of Radio ReOrient continues our project this season of returning to the first principles of Critical Muslim Studies. In the previous episode, Hizer Mir and Salman Sayyid discussed post-positivism: here they turn to post-orientalism. The advent of Edward Said’s Orientalism in 1978 shook the foundations of many academic disciplines. Not only Oriental Studies (which was the most obvious object of Said’s critique) but almost every discipline found itself asking the q...
Jul 02, 2024•36 min•Season 11Ep. 3
This episode is the first of three special episodes in this season of Radio ReOrient in which we look back on the first principles of Critical Muslim Studies. In this episode, Hizer Mir talks to Salman Sayyid about post-positivism - what it means, what it offers, and how it relates to the project of decolonising. The discussion that we kick off here will reverberate throughout this series, as we return to talk in later episodes about post-orientalism and decoloniality.
Jul 02, 2024•41 min•Season 11Ep. 2
Radio ReOrient is back for another season, and this time Hizer Mir is joined by a new team of hosts: Claudia Radiven, Saeed Khan and Chella Ward. In this first episode Hizer and Chella interview Ambereen Dadabhoy, associate professor of literature at Harvey Mudd College, about her brand new book Shakespeare through Islamic Worlds (Routledge, 2024). In the process we discover Shakespeare’s secret Muslim characters, travel around an early modern Mediterranean that is nothing like the border of Eur...
Jun 13, 2024•1 hr•Season 11Ep. 1
In this episode of the Radio ReOrient podcast, Dr. Shehla Khan, Dr. Sher Ali Tareen, and Salman Sayyid discuss the ongoing crisis in Pakistan under Gaza’s looming shadow . The latest exacerbation of the crisis comes with the general elections of February 2024, which represent an electoral heist of historically unprecedented proportions followed by the regime’s concerted efforts to normalize the results. This conversation ties the current political climate to broader global issues, including the ...
Apr 08, 2024•1 hr 20 min•Season 10Ep. 9
In this episode of Radio ReOrient, Salman Sayyid, with Hizer Mir as your host, discusses why Gaza matters. This leads to a wide range of discussions with topics ranging from ongoing support form Washington, London and other Western governments for Israel, how the notion of ummah deployed in light of the attack on Gaza has disrupted the nation state model (amongst others) and what is meant by the concept of Palestinisation of Muslims and how that can be resisted.
Jan 08, 2024•47 min•Season 10Ep. 8
Islamophobia is a global phenomenon found not only among the international 'usual suspects' of gross and systemic human and civil rights violators but also among established liberal democracies that present themselves as custodians of the international legal order. In this episode of Radio ReOrient, we talk to Saul Takahashi, an international human rights lawyer and academic who navigates the intersections between Islamophobia and the international liberal order. He describes his odyssey through...
Dec 14, 2023•1 hr 2 min•Season 10Ep. 6
This episode of Radio Reorient is based on an event held on Islamophobia and Emancipation. This event was held to discuss the definition of Islamophobia that was put forth by the people’s definition in the UK… Islamophobia is a form of racism against Muslimness and perceived Muslimness. In this intriguing episode of Radio ReOrient, Kawter Najib, Abdoolkarim Vakil, Salman Sayyid, hosted by myself, Hizer Mir engage in a discussion that explores Islamophobia, its definition and emancipation.
Nov 17, 2023•1 hr•Season 10Ep. 5
In this episode, Kawter Najib sits with Hizer Mir to return to the topic of Islamophobia in France. In this discussion we talk about Kawter’s own experiences of Islamophobia in France as well as the Islamophobic murder of French-Algerian teenager Nahel Merzouk in the summer.
Nov 03, 2023•40 min•Season 10Ep. 4
In this episode of Radio ReOrient, Rebecca Ruth Gould, Claudia Radiven and your host Salman Sayyid, talk about some of the issues raised by Rebecca’s new book Erasing Palestine (https://www.versobooks.com/en-gb/products/2903-erasing-palestine).
Oct 20, 2023•58 min•Season 10Ep. 3
