Islamist Movements in South Asia
If you experience any technical difficulties with this video or would like to make an accessibility-related request, please send a message to digicomm@uchicago.edu. Journalist Ahmed Rashid and professor Ebrahim Moosa discuss the often overlooked social and political context of Islamist movements in South Asia. Rashid examines recent political developments in the Middle East, while Moosa explores the South Asian madrasa (Islamic seminaries) and considers how this educational institution shapes social and political life in the region. Over the last decade, public discussion of Islam and Islamist movements has been influenced by the vocabulary of US counter-terrorism and foreign policy strategies. This vocabulary ignores the idiosyncrasies of local forms of government, political counter-narratives, and religious contexts, and undermines efforts to write about and analyze political actors throughout the Islamic world. Ahmed Rashid is a Pakistani journalist based in Lahore. He writes for the Daily Telegraph, London, the International Herald Tribune, the New York Review of Books, BBC Online, The Wall Street Journal, The Nation, and academic and foreign affairs journals. Ebrahim Moosa is Associate Professor of Islamic Studies in the Department of Religion at Duke University. He was named a Carnegie Scholar in 2005 to pursue research on the madrasas. The World Beyond the Headlines is a project of the Center for International Studies, which brings scholars, journalists, and world leaders to the University to discuss issues of current global importance. For more information on this event, visit cis.uchicago.edu/events/2010-2011/islamist-movements-across-the-globe Information on the entire The World Beyond the Headlines series can be found at cis.uchicago.edu/wbh This program was organized by the University of Chicago Center for International Studies and co-sponsored by the Center for Middle Eastern Studies, the South Asia Language and Area Center, and the Center for East European and Russian/Eurasian Studies. March 15, 2011.
