Bangstad, Sindre, Irfan Ahmad et al 2017. “Anthropological Publics, Public Anthropology: An AAA Annual Meeting Roundtable”. Hau: Journal of Ethnographic Theory. 7(1): 489-508.
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This conversation between a private security guard, Dharmendra Panchal, and Irfan Ahmad serves as a window to understand contemporary India from the perspective of an “ordinary” or “common” man, an ardent and articulate supporter of the current ruling party and its worldview. At the centre of this conversation is the salience of Hinduism in politics, not only at the national level but also internationally. Addressing such issues as the visibility and assertion of Dalits (ex-untouchables) in the public realms, inter-caste and inter-religious marriages, prostitution, development, technology, corruption, terrorism, the notions and practices of war, the United Nations and the current world order, in this conversation Panchal describes his worldview according to which the current dark time of Kaliyuga marked as it is by untruth (adharma) is about to end. The advent of Kalkī, future avatar of god Vishnu, will end the present Kaliyuga and herald the age of truth (Satya Yuga) which Panchal saw actualized well in his own lifetime. The new age of truth led by Hindus will establish a righteous and prosperous order at domestic as well as at the world level. Panchal skilfully connects the Hindu metaphysical postulates to the empirical world of politics to present a description and narrative that invite analytical attention.
DetailsThis conversation between a private security guard, Dharmendra Panchal, and Irfan Ahmad serves as a window to understand contemporary India from the perspective of an “ordinary” or “common” man, an ardent and articulate supporter of the current ruling party and its worldview. At the centre of this conversation is the salience of Hinduism in politics,…
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This article presents biographies of three activists of the Student Islamic Movement of India (SIMI). Following 9/11, the Indian state banned SIMI for fomenting “terrorism”, “sedition” and “destroying Indian nationalism”. Of the three SIMI activists, Qasim Omar had spent 30 months in prison and Samin Patel, a US citizen of Indian origin, 27 months.
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Ahmad, Irfan. 2015. “In Conversation With John Keane:Gods, Power, Democracy”. Journal of Religious and Political Practice. 1(1): 73-91. http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/20566093.2015.1047688#abstract In a wide-ranging conversation with Irfan Ahmad, John Keane, renowned political scientist and author of The Life and Death of Democracy discusses many key issues at the heart of contemporary reflections and concerns about democracy. Keane,…
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Ahmad, Irfan. 2015. “Talal Asad Interviewed by Irfan Ahmad”. Public Culture. 27(2): 259 – 279. Anthropologist Talal Asad, interviewed by Irfan Ahmad, talks about his conceptual engagement with the outcomes of religion, politics, and the past and his work to problematize a “seamless web” view of history’s unfolding. This interview consists of two parts. Part…
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This article offers a preliminary analysis of what the Modi phenomenon means in terms of BJP’s sweeping win on 16 May. It makes four propositions. First, we stop seeing it as an individual phenomenon centered on the personality of Modi even as his votaries as well as some critics tend to view it that way. Second, the…
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Based on the analyses of select elections coverage by five television channels – India TV, NDTV, Aaj Tak, ANI, and IBN– I argue that: The way journalists pose questions to their favorite politicians are often already answers; In pursuing a storyline, journalists subordinate, even sacrifice, actual responses or events/facts to bolster their pre-determined narrative; and…
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This article analyses the manifestos of the parties which matter in India’s elections. It is my contention that there are more similarities than differences in various manifestos. Minor differences that exist hardly make a substantial difference thereby eliminating politics by installing nude policy.
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2014/04/manifestos-indian-elections-201441434237199300.html
In Being Muslim in South Asia. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.
Is it not contradictory that Modi stands exonerated of any role in the pogrom of over 3,000 Muslims…
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Ahmad, Irfan. 2013a. Interview about the Australian Elections Result SBS Radio, Hindi (Australia) on 10 September, 2013.
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Discourses about the legitimacy of the interim government continue to obscure the reality on the ground, writes scholar….
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Interview with SBS Urdu Radio (7.30 Minutes) broadcast on 11 August 2013 about the 2013 elections and Australian political parties’ reasons to attact immigrants’ vote; also, is the two-party system healthy for Austarlian democracy?
Ahmad, Irfan. 2012e. “Cracks in the ‘Mightiest Fortress’: Jamaat-e-Islami’s Changing Discourse on Women”.In. Caroline Osella and Filippo Osella (eds). Islamic Reform in South Asia. Delhi: Cambridge University Press.
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Politics, Religion & Ideology. 14(2): 234–252.
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Ahmad, Irfan. 2013a. “Islam and Politics in South Asia”. In. John Esposito & Emad El-Din Shahin (eds). The Oxford Handbook of Islam and Politics. New York: Oxford University Press. Pp. 324–339.
Ahmad, Irfan. 2012d.“Sir Syed Ahmad Khan”. In. G. Böwering, P. Crone, W. Kadi, D. Stewart, and Qasim Zaman (eds). The Princeton Encyclopedia of Islamic Political Thought. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Pp. 27–28.
Ahmad, Irfan. 2012c.
“Jamaat-e-Islami”. In. Gerhard Böwering, Patricia Crone, Wadad Kadi, Devin Stewart, and Qasim Zaman (eds). The Princeton Encyclopedia of Islamic Political Thought. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Pp. 50–52.
Ahmad, Irfan. 2012b. “Mawdudi, Syed Abul Ala -1903-1979”. In. G. Böwering, P. Crone, W. Kadi, D. Stewart, and Qasim Zaman (eds). The Princeton Encyclopedia of Islamic Political Thought. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Pp. 112–115.
Ahmad, Irfan. 2012a.
“Aligarh”. In. Gerhard Böwering, Patricia Crone, Wadad Kadi, Devine Stewart, Qasim Zaman (eds). The Princeton Encyclopedia of Islamic Political Thought. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Pp. 38–40.
Citizenship Studies. 16(7): 887 – 903.
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Ahmad, Irfan. 2012f. “Between Moderation & Radicalization: Transnatio nal Interactions of Jamaat-e-Islami”, In. Ajay Sahooet al (eds). Indian Diaspora and Transnationalism. Delhi: Rawat (rpro. from Global Networks: A Journal of Transnational Affairs. The present study of transnationalism was born out of observations that migrants no longer simply cross borders to live elsewhere, but regularly turn this ‘crossing borders’ into…
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Rather than promote democracy in the Middle East, the West has a long history of doing the exact opposite. http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/03/201232710543250236.html
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South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies. 35(2): 477–494. Ahmad, Irfan. 2012a.
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Indian Muslims are often accused of terrorist links, but in many cases it is Muslims themselves who are terrorised.
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/03/201232710543250236.html
Economic and Political Weekly. 46(45): 30 – 35.
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Feminist efforts made by a younger generation of educated, modern Muslim women pass in particular through the re-appropriation and re-interpretation of the Qur’an and the prophetic traditions, says the Indian sociologist Irfan Ahmad. He has studied the evolution of the discourse about women within the Indian neo-fundamentalist movement Jamaat-e-Islami. He has spoken to Resetdoc during…
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Philosophy and Social Criticism. 37(4): 459 –470. Translated into Turkish.Journal of Islamic Rresearch. 2012. 23(2): 79 –88. Ahmad, Irfan. 2011b.
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Audio-File-Paper at the conference Spirited Voices from the Muslim World, University of Sydney, Australia.
Anthropological Theory.11(1): 107– 132. Ahmad, Irfan. 2011c.
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Ahmad, Irfan. 2010. “Is There an Ethics of Terrorism? Islam, Globalisation, Militancy”. South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies.33(3): 487–498. Introduction In Metapolitics, Alain Badiou writes: ‘Everything consensual is suspicious as far as the philosopher is concerned’.1 Few texts in recent times demonstrate the merit of this observation more eloquently than Faisal Devji’s The Terrorist in Search…
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Author Irfan Ahmad brings a different perspective, whether he is analysing attacks on Indians Down Under or writing about evolution of Jamaat-e-Islami, finds Ziya Us Salam….
DetailsInterview with ResetDoc’s Nicolai Eberth “Secularizing Secularism”.
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Ahmad, Irfan. 2010. “Genealogy of the Islamic State: Reflections on Maududi’s Political Thought and Islamism”.In. F. Osella and B. Soares (eds). Islam, Politics and Anthropology. Wiley-Blackwell & JRAI. 138-55. Part of The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute Special Issue Book Series, Islam, Politics, Anthropology offers critical reflections on past and current studies of Islam and politics in…
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Ahmad, Irfan. 2009. “The Indian Jamaat-e-Islami Reconsiders Secular Democracy” In. Barbara D. Metcalf (ed.). Islam in South Asia in Practice: Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press: 447–456 This volume of Princeton Readings in Religions brings together the work of more than thirty scholars of Islam and Muslim societies in South Asia to create a rich anthology of primary…
DetailsAhmad, Irfan. 2009b. “The Secular State and the Geography of Radicalism”.Economic and Political Weekly. XLIV(23): 33– 38. The burgeoning scholarship on Islamist radicalisation or terrorism – both popular as well as academic – is mostly alarmist. Too often Islamist radicalisation is understood as an offshoot of some deeply entrenched values or that the culture of…
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Ahmad, Irfan. 2009a. “Genealogy of the Islamic State: Reflections on Maududi’s Political Thought and Islamism”.Journal of Royal Anthropological Institute (NS) 15: S145– S162. ABSTRACT: According to the conventional wisdom, there is no separation between religion and the state in Islam. Ernest Gellner thus asserted that Islam ‘was the state from the very start’. Most readings of ‘Islamic…
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Ahmad, Irfan. 2008. “Power, Purity and the Vanguard: Educational Ideology of the Jamaat-e-Islami of India”. In. Jamal Malik (ed.). Madrasas in South Asia: Teaching Terror? London: Routledge: 142– 164. After 9/11, madrasas have been linked to international terrorism. They are suspected to foster anti-western, traditionalist or even fundamentalist views and to train al-Qaeda fighters. This has led…
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Ahmad, Irfan. 2008. “Cracks in the ‘Mightiest Fortress’: Jamaat-e-Islami’s Changing Discourse on Women”.Modern Asian Studies42(2&3): 549–575. Abstract Islamists’ ideas about the position of women are readily invoked to portray them as ‘anti-modern’. The operating assumption is that Islamism (mutatis mutandis Islam) sanctions gender hierarchy. In this paper, drawing on ethnographic research and written sources of…
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Ahmad, Irfan. 2006. “The State in Islamist Thought”.ISIM Review. 18 (Autumn): 12-13. Reproduced in WLUML Dossier 28 (December 2006): 35– 39. For a summary in Dutch “De Scheiding Tussen Moskee en Statat” Click here Abstract: The state became central to Islamism not because Islam theologically entailed it, but because of socio-political formations that developed in the early twentieth century.…
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Ahmad, Irfan. 2005. “Between Moderation and Radicalization: Transnational Interactions of Jamaat-e-Islami of India”. Global Networks: A Journal of Transnational Affairs. 5(3): 279– 299. Abstract Religious movements have often been studied in the context of nationstates. With scholarly attention now shifting to globalization and other world system processes, there is a growing move to go beyond the particularity…
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Ahmad, Irfan. 2004. “The Jewish Hand: The Response of the Jamaat-e-Islami Hind”. In. Peter Van der Veer and Shoma Munshi (eds) Media, War and Terrorism: Responses from the Middle East and Asia. London and New York: Routledge Curzon: 137– 154. This collection of essays covers the media and public debate dimension of the events of 9/11…
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Ahmad, Irfan. 2003a. “A Different Jihad: Dalit Muslims’ Challenge to Ashraf Hegemony”. Economic and Political Weekly. 38 (46): 86– 91. Abstract: This article discusses the issue of caste in the context of the backward Muslim communities of Bihar elucidated in Ali Anwar’s book, and the complete marginalisation of the groups at the bottom of the pecking order.…
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Ahmad, Irfan. 2003b. “India-Pakistan: Friendship as Enmity”. Economic and Political Weekly. 38 (31): 3231– 3233. Abstract: While one can barely deny the importance of the episode of Noor Fatima from Pakistan receiving medical treatment in Bangalore, an excavation into our mass psyche would perhaps reveal something extremely disturbing. Treating Fatima was not a usual apolitical medical practice.…
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Ahmad, Irfan. 2002. “Timothy McVeighs of the Orient”. Economic and Political Weekly. 37 (15): 1399– 1400. Abstract: Timothy McVeigh and Osama bin Laden share common ground. The difference, if any, is that the terrorism of the former arises out of moral guilt whereas that of the latter stems from entrenched anger and a profound sense of…
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“In Memoriam: Ali Sardar Jafri (1913-2000)”. The Annual of Urdu Studies. No.16: 405– 408. Reproduced from Seminar 2000, 494.
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Ahmad, Irfan. 1997.
“Looking Beyond the Radcliffe Line”. In. V. Grover and R. Arora (eds). India: Fifty Years of Independence. Delhi: Deep and Deep Publications.
