Events

November 18, 2023
Ahmad, Irfan. 2023. “How (not) to Write Muslim Thoughts Notes on Shahab Ahmed’s What
is Islam?” Paper for the Conference on Contemporary Muslim Thought. ISAM & İLKE
Foundation, Istanbul, Turkey.

January 8, 2023
Discussant for session three of the symposium (Online) “ReOrient Special Issue: Hindutva and
the Muslim Subject,” University of Leeds, UK.

December 9 – 10, 2022
“Destroying the Babri Masjid: Departure from the Era of Secularism or Pretense to Pluralism
Unmasked?” for the online symposium “Afterlives of Babri Masjid: Thirty Years Later,”
organized by South Asia Institute, Department of Religion & Department of History, Columbia
University.

October 25 , 2022
Discussion on my coedited book The Nation Form in the Global Age: Ethnographic
Perspectives (Palgrave, 2022); in Conversation with Political Scientist Dr. Heba Raouf Ezzat;
department of Sociology, Ibn Haldun University.

September 16 – 18, 2022
“Five Theses On How Writing History Without Political Theory-Philosophy Is Boring,” for the
Fourth International Süleymaniye Symposium on “The Mughal Empire: New Sources, New
Approaches,” Ibn Haldun University, Istanbul

July 30 – 31, 2022
“Differentiated in ‘Occident,’ Integrated (Whole) in ‘Orient:’ Racist-Orientalist Tenets of
‘Holism’ in Anthropology and Elsewhere,” for the Conference Towards A Multiplex Relational Theory of Action: Why Do People Do What They Do” organized by Ibn Haldun University,
Istanbul and John Templeton Foundation, Pennsylvania.

July 14 – 16, 2022
What Might a Global Political Anthropology of Islamophobia Might Look Like: On
Domophilia, Vacuum and Globalism,” for the Inaugural Conference States of Islamophobia
Studies, organized by International Islamophobia Studies Research Association (IISRA) and
held at Ibn Haldun University, Istanbul

July 5, 2022
“Nationalism and Its Combat Concepts: Reflections on Violence and Indian Democracy,” for
the VI. Uluslararası 15 Temmuz Sempozyumu, held and organized by Marmara University,
Istanbul.

June 9, 2022
Public Conversation on Twitter Space with Annie Zaidi, novelist-poet, about “How to
Construct a Political Language in Times of Crisis, ” moderated and organized by Francesca
Recchia, editor of The Polis Project [due to sudden inaccessibility to Twitter space, Talal Asad,
the key interlocutor, could not join]

May 20 –22, 2022
Keynote titled “Time in/of Modernity, Time in/of Islam” delivered at the sociology day
symposium, department of sociology, Ibn Haldun University.

November 17, 2021
Presented paper titled “Anthropology is about the True and the Possible, Not Merely the Real” in the panel“The True, the Real, and the Possible: Truth in/of Anthropology,” organized by Yunus Telliel and chaired by me at the 2021 AAA Conference on Truth & Responsibility, Baltimore, USA, 17-21 November

November 17, 2021
Participated in the Roundtable on “Obeying God for the Nation: Religion, Citizenship and Struggles for Belonging,” organized by David Henig and Joyce Dalsheim at the 2021 AAA Conference on Truth & Responsibility, Baltimore, USA, 17-21 November

January 26, 2021
Paper titled “Recognizing Hindu Orientalism,” Zoom seminar, Department of Indology, University of Tübingen, Germany

July 03, 2020
Paper titled “Are Anthropology and Ethnography Equivalent?” Zoom seminar at the National Museum of Ethnology, Osaka, Japan

October 3 –4, 2019
“Beyond Mother Goddess: Imagining India as a Bouquet, Bride and Garden,” paper for the conference on “Rethinking Public Religion: Time, Space, Memory,” organized by the Institute for Religion, Culture and Public Life, Columbia University

June 12, 2019
“Another Genealogy of Critique: On Islam and Reason” Trinity Term Seminar Series, Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies, Oxford University

March 28, 2019
“Indian Democracy and the Algebra of Warfare-Welfare: An Anthropological Outline,” CSSS (Sociology) colloquium, JNU, New Delhi

January 17, 2019
With Peter van der Veer, “Muslim Bare Life in India Today” for the Understanding New Hindutva workshop,” organized by Centre for Modern Indian Studies, University of Göttingen

November 17, 2018
Author Meets Critics panel on “Religion As Critique”at the American Academy of Religion Conference, Denver, Participants: Ilyse Fuerst, Ebrahim Moosa, Peter Gottschalk, Marcia Hermansen, Teena Purohit, and SherAli Tareen

November 16, 2018
Roundtable on “Religion As Critique” at the American Anthropological Association Conference, San Jose, Participants: Mayanthi Fernando, Robert Hefner, Nada Moumtaz, Yunus Telliel, and Dina Siddiqi.

November 12, 2018
“Beyond the ‘Secular/Enlightenment’ Frame: Critique as an Everyday Practice among Muslims,” Book Talk at Global Politics and Religion Research Group, Buffett Institute for Global Studies, Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois, USA

September 15, 2018
“‘Freeing Anthropology from Critique’ or Critiquing Anthropology? On Critique and Islam,” Pembroke College, University of Cambridge, the UK, for the Imaginative Landscapes of Islamic Politics: Aspirations, Dreams, and Critique Conference

August 31, 2018
Book release by the ex-Vice President of India and Symposium with four panelists on Religion as Critique, India International Centre, New Delhi, organized by Oxford University Press

August 29, 2018
“Re-Orientalism, Media and the Eclipse of the Sachar Report,” Talk at Centre for Culture, Media and Governance, Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi

August 24, 2018
Symposium with four panelists-faculties of University of Hyderabad on “Religion As Critique,” Centre for Comparative Literature, University of Hyderabad, India

March 6, 2018
Paper “Home, Homeland, Territorial Sacralization: Religion and Belonging across Europe and
South Asia”, at the seminar Sacrality acting up in Secular space: scope and limits of the South
Asian Muslim Groups in Europe and in Homeland,” Vrije University, Amsterdam

February2-3, 2018
“Notes on Indian Populism,” workshop organized by Georg Eckert Institute – Leibniz Institute for International Text Book Research, Leibniz–Zentrum Moderner Orient and Centre for Contemporary History (ZFF) at Leibniz–Zentrum Moderner Orient, Berlin

November 23, 2018
Book Talk “Religion As Critique,” Centre for Global South Asian Studies, University of Copenhagen, Denmark

November 13, 2017
“Ethnic Democracy: An Ethnographic Account of Terror of India’s Counter-terror Agencies,” Religious Diversity Colloquium, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity, Göttingen

November 09, 2017
Book Symposium on “Religion As Critique,” with Armando Salvatore, Ruth Mas and Peter van der Veer, Max Planck Institute, Göttingen

October 23, 2017
Seminar “Democracy as Rumor,” Institute for Ethnology, Ludwig Maximilian University, Munich

October 17, 2017
Book Talk “Religion As Critique,” Leipzig University, Department of Ethnology, Winter Series

September 14, 2017
Organized workshop “Is ‘That is Enough about Ethnography’ Enough” on Tim Ingold’s writings, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity, Göttingen –My paper “Toward a Political Anthropology of Terrorism: An In-Disciplinary Approach”

April 11-13, 2017
Seminar titled “Inequality in the Era of ‘War on Terror’: On Underrepresentation of Minorities in Political Economy and Overrepresentation in Jail,” S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore

February 24-25, 2017
Paper “Turn to the Right? The Indian Left and the ‘Muslim Question’ in Post-1947 India,” SouthAsia Conference: Inequality in South Asia, New York University, New York

November 18, 2016
Discussant for the panel “Being Muslim from South Asia,” American Anthropological Association Conference, Minneapolis

November 18, 2016
Speaker in the Roundtable “Anthropological Publics, Public Anthropology,” American Anthropological Association Conference, Minneapolis

August 14-15, 2016
“When Religion Becomes Something Else and Something Else Religion: Anthropology, Enlightenment, Religion and IR,” paper at Symposium “The Politics of Religious Freedom in the Asia-Pacific,”University of Notre Dame, Sydney

December 03, 2015
“Anthropology/Sociology and International Relations: The Importance of C. Wright Mills,” paper at Australian Anthropological Society Conference, held at University of Melbourne

July 07, 2015
“Democracy as Rumor: Media, Religion and the 2014 Indian Elections,” International Convention of Asia Scholars, ICAS, Conference in the panel “Acche din [Good Days]? Politics and Governance in India after One Year of the BJP”

January 21, 2015
“Rumor and Democratic Politics: Anthropological Notes on the 2014 Indian Elections,” Department of Sociology Seminar Series, Ambedkar University Delhi (AUD), Delhi, India

January 13, 2015
“Democracy as Rumor: Media, Religion and the 2014 Indian Elections,” Department of PoliticalScience, University of Delhi, Delhi, India

May 2, 2014
“After Atrocity: Indian Democracy and Secularism in the Wake of the Gujarat Pogrom,” talk atIILAH Melbourne Law School, University of Melbourne, Australia

January 14, 2014
“Margins of Knowledge: Nation-State, the “Other” and the Discplin(e)ing of Sociology/Anthropology,” Department of Sociology, University of Hyderabad, India

January 13, 2014
“Theorizing Religion and Democracy: The Transformation of India’s Jamaat-e-Islami,” Public Talk at University of Hyderabad, India

December 22, 2013
“Islamic Reform”, Keynote Address at the Kerala Muslim Heritage Studies Conference, Calicut,Kerala, India

December 13-14, 2013
“Propose and Oppose: Islam in Asia Over Longue Durée,” paper for the workshop Reimagining Asia organized jointly by The Indian Economic and Social History Review, Sageand Teen Murti, New Delhi

June 20-21, 2013
“Bloody Democracy,” paper at the Conference Future of Democracy: Europe and Islam in the
Twenty First Century, Monash University Centre at Prato, Italy.

April 19-21, 2013
“Margins of Knowledge: Nation-State, ‘the Other’ and the Disciplin(e)ing of Sociology/Anthropology,” key lecture for the conference “Questioning Marginality,” Brown University, Providence, USA.

November 29, 2012
“Toward an Anthropology of Critique: Secular, Religious, Immanent, Transcendental…” South
Asia Center, University of Chicago

November 21, 2012
“Toward an Anthropology of Critique: Secular, Religious, Immanent, Transcendental…”
Committee on Religion Seminar Series, City University of New York, The Graduate Center.

July 11-13, 2012
“Kafka in India: Terrorism, Media, Muslims,” paper at the 9thBiennial Conference of Asian Studies Association, University of Western Sydney, presented in the Panel (convened byIrfan Ahmad) Leadership Matters: Elites, Media, Nationalism and Religion in South Asia

July 7, 2012
“One Movement, Three Countries, Seven Decades: The Trajectory of Jamaat-e-Islami in South
Asia”, paper at the Workshop “Following the Path of the Prophet Muhammad: Islamic Piety, Social Movements and Political Organization,”Goethe-University Frankfurt, Germany, Department of Anthropology, Cluster of Excellence, Normative Orders

November 23, 2011
“How Not to Talk About Secularism and Islam”. Paper at the conference Ethics in a Multi-Faith Society: Muslims and Christians in Dialogue, held at and organized by Australian Catholic University, and Australian Intercultural Society, Melbourne

October 20, 2011
“Anthropology of Nationalism, Nationalism of Anthropology: Notes on the Idea and Practice of Indian Anthropology”. Anthropology Colloquium,Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia

September 27-28, 2011
“Kafka in India: A Short Essay on Three Big Ts –Terrorism, Treason, Technology”. Paper at the conference Islam in Modern South Asia organized by Institute of South Asian Studies, Singapore.

September 16, 2011
“Re-theorizing Democracy and Islam”. Public lecture at Centre for the Study of Contemporary Muslim Societies, University of Western Sydney, Australia.

June 16-17, 2011
“In Defense of Ho(s)tel: Islamophobia, Domophilia and the West”, paper at Globalization, Illiberalism, the West and Islamconference, Monash University Prato Campus, Italy.

April 28-30, 2011
“De-Democratization in Muslim Societies”. Paper at the conference Spirited Voices from the Muslim World: Islam, Democracy, Gender Rights, University of Sydney, Australia.

April 2-8, 2011
“The Revolt of the Young: An Essay on Revolting Injustice”. Paper at the advanced seminar The 9/11 Generation: Young Muslims in New World Order, School of Advanced Research, New Mexico, USA.

February, 8, 2011
“Writing Anthropology of India: Notes on Methodological Nationalism,” Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity, Gottingen, Germany.

December 18-19 2010
“Democracy, Theo-democracy, Nation: Re-reading Maududi and Jamaat-e-Islami,” paper at Transcending Binaries: Conference on Islam & Politics in South Asia, BRAC University,Dhaka, Bangladesh.

October 27, 2010
“Islam and Democracy: Some Anthropological Reflections”. Paper at Australian National University. Department of Anthropology.

July 05-08, 2010
“Writing Anthropology of India: Notes on Methodological Nationalism”. Paper at the 18th Biennial Conference of the Asian Studies Association of Australia, University of Adelaide, South Australia.

May 19-24, 2010
“Islam and Democracy: Some Anthropological Reflections.” Paper at the conference Realigning Liberalism: Pluralism, Integration and Identitiesorganized under the banner “Philosophers Bridge the Bosphorous” by Reset Dialogue on Civilizations, Istanbul Bilgi University, Istanbul.

March 22-23, 2010
“Writing Anthropology of India: Preliminary Notes on Methodological Nationalism”. Paper at the workshop Studying Spaces of Non-Existence: Methodological Concerns, Murdoch University, Perth, Australia

February 11, 2010
“Culture and Critique”. Seminar at the Centre for the Study of Social System, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.

December 2-6 2009
“An Outline of Abul Kalam Azad’s Cosmopolitan Theology”, paper at the 108thAnnual Conference of American Anthropological Association, Philadelphia; Panel on Muslim Cosmopolitanism and the End/s of Secularism? Movement, Identity, and Contemporary Reconfigurations.

December 01, 2009
“Islam and Democracy in India: Some Anthropological Reflections” seminar at Michigan State University, Lansing, USA. Invited Talk based on my book Islamism and Democracy in India.

July-18-19, 2009
“In Defense of Hotel: Notes on Why Islamophobia Should Be Read as Homephilia,” paper at the Conference on Islamophobia: Fear of the Other,Monash University, Melbourne.

November 28-29, 2008
“Outline of a Theory of Immanent Critique”. International Workshop on “Understanding Immanent Critique: Cultural Politics and Islamic Activism”, ISIM, Leiden University, The Netherlands

July 9-11, 2008
Ahmad, Irfan. “Genealogy of the Islamic State: Reflections on Maududi’s Political Thought and Islamism,”20thEuropean Conference on Modern South Asian Studies, Manchester, UK

October 19-20, 2007
“The Show Boy, Hindus’ Imam, an Apostate, or a Nationalist? A Preliminary Outline of Abulkalam Azad’s Cosmopolitan Theology,”Contemporary Muslim Cosmopolitanisms Conference, Cambridge University

September 06, 2007
“How Practice Transforms Theory: Immanent Critique and Jamaat-e-Islami’s Changing Discourse”. Weekly seminar at Centre for the Study of Social Systems, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi

May 25, 2007
“Genealogy of the Islamic State: Reflections on Maududi’s Political Thought and Islamism”, paper for the Conference on Cool Passion: The Political Theology of Conviction, University of Amsterdam

December 01, 2006
“Cracks in the ‘Fort of Islamic Culture’: Jamaat-e-Islami’s Changing Discourse on Women”, South Asia Seminar, Department of Anthropology, University of Sussex, UK

November 15, 2006
“Cracks in the ‘Fort of Islamic Culture’: Jamaat-e-Islami’s Changing Discourse on Women”, 105thAnnual Conference of American Anthropological Association, San Jose, California; Panel on Islam, Politics and Modernity: Anthropological Perspectives

October 13-15, 2006
“‘If We Don’t …Wage Jihad, What Will We Do?’ Explaining Radicalization of Young Islamists in India”, Conference on Youth and the Global South: Religion, Politics and the Making of Youth in Africa, Asia and the Middle East, Dakar, Senegal

April 6-9, 2006
“Erosion of Secularism and Explosion of Jihad: Explaining Islamist Radicalization in India”, Panel on “Ideology of Transformation, Transformation of Ideology: The Many Faces of the Jamaat-e-Islami in South Asia” for Conference of the Association for Asian Studies, San Francisco

February 20, 2006
“Is Genre Sovereign: Poetry and Limits of Islamism?” Public Culture Colloquium, Department of Anthropology, University of Texas, Austin

May 26-27, 2005
“Between Moderation and Radicalization: Transnational Interactions of Jamaat-e-Islami of India”, Workshop on Islamic Reform Movements in South Asia, SOAS, University of London

May 19-21, 2005
“Familiar Discourse in an Unfamiliar World: Conflict, Protest and Democratization in a Tahriki Madrasa of North India”, International Workshop on Islamic Learning in South Asia, Erfurt University, Germany

October 25, 2004
“Should Ideology Remain an Orphan in Movement Theories: Ideological Mutation and Islamist Movement in India?” Paper for the Workshop with James Jasper on Protest: Theory and Practice after the Paradigms, ASSR, University of Amsterdam

November 21 2003
“‘Ninety Nine Percent Individuals of this Qaum are Ignorant of Islam, Ninety Five Percent Are Deviant…’ Discourse of Purity and Purity of Discourse”, Dutch Anthropological Association Conference, 105th year, Leiden. Panel: Postcoloniality and the Search for Purity

May 6 2003
“Understanding Religious Nationalist Movement in India: How (Ir)relevant is the Contentious Politics Model”, Workshop with Sidney Tarrow on Contentious Politics: Identity, Mobilization and Transnational Politics, University of Amsterdam

July 15-28 2001
“Mapping Religious Nationalism: The Jamaat-e-Islami in India”, Summer Institute Workshop on Public Spheres and Muslim Identities, Wissenschaftskolleg Zu, Berlin.

May 28 2001
“Politicize Islam, Islamize Politics: Electoral Process and the Jamaat-e-Islami Hind”, Conference on Cultures of Voting held at Centre d’Etudes et de Recherché Internationales, Paris.

February 24-28 2000
“In the Name of Islam: Construction of Cultural Identity in Nazir Ahmad’s Novel, IbnulVaqt” at the Annual Cultural Studies Workshop held at Bharatpur and organized by Center for Studies in Social Science, Calcutta.