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Akbar’s Chamber offers a non-political, non-sectarian and non-partisan space for exploring the past and present of Islam. It has no political or theological bias other than a commitment to the Socratic method (which is to say that questions lead us to understanding) and the empirical record (which is to say the evidence of the world around us). By these methods, Akbar’s Chamber is devoted to enriching public awareness of Islam and Muslims both past and present. The podcast aims to improve understanding of Islam in all its variety, in all regions of the world, by inviting experts to share their specialist knowledge in terms that we can all understand.
Episodes
Saturday Nov 14, 2020
Saturday Nov 14, 2020
In 1898, an obscure Syrian scholar called Rashid Rida founded a magazine in Cairo called al-Manar (‘The Lighthouse’). Over the next forty years, it reached readers as far apart as India and Argentina, Africa and Indonesia, spreading worldwide the new form of Islam called Salafism. Despite never holding any formal religious office, by seizing the opportunities of the Arabic media revolution Rida became the preeminent Muslim influencer of the age of print. Urging readers to return to the pure Islam of the ‘pious ancestors,’ he aimed to free his fellow believers from the shackles of tradition that prevented them from embracing modernity. As both prosperity gospel and means of empowerment, Rida’s magazine reveals the attractions of early Salafism. Nile Green talks to Leor Halevi, the author of Modern Things on Trial: Islam's Global and Material Reformation in the Age of Rida (Columbia University Press, 2019).
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