The Telos Press Podcast: Rabab Kamal on Islamic Reform

By   ·  Tuesday, May 4, 2021

In today’s episode of the Telos Press Podcast, David Pan talks with Rabab Kamal about her article “The Curious Case of Islamic Reform: Why the Concept of Holy Violence Remains Disputed and How Nonviolent Islamism Is More Than Problematic,” from Telos 194 (Spring 2021). An excerpt of the article appears here. This article was part of a group of essays in Telos 194 that discussed Elham Manea’s new book The Perils of Nonviolent Islamism, available here for 20% off the list price. To learn how your university can subscribe to Telos, visit our library recommendation page. Print copies of Telos 194 are available for purchase in our store.

Listen to the podcast here.

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Telos 194 (Spring 2021): Political Theology Today

By   ·  Friday, March 19, 2021

Telos 194 (Spring 2021): Political Theology Today is now available for purchase in our store. Individual subscriptions to Telos are also available in both print and online formats.

What does political theology mean today? At the Telos-Paul Piccone Institute conference from which many of the essays in this issue originated, a primary goal was to discuss the crisis of secular liberalism and “how faith is reshaping culture and politics today.” But even this project perhaps limits too much the scope of political theology, implying that we have a choice between reason and faith, or that political theology is a commitment to faith rather than an analysis of the element of faith that underlies all of our endeavors. The idea of political theology begins with the premise that every existing human order is built upon some understanding of ultimate meaning. The task would then be to analyze the kind of meaning that each existing order embodies and determine the kinds of decisions about meaning that are made and need to be made at various points in its history. Even secular liberalism, to the extent that it constitutes an existing order, presumes some answer to this question of meaning, and a closer look at the political theology of the United States reveals a mythic dimension that underlies its liberal democratic processes. The essays in this issue examine the political theological underpinnings of economy, politics, technology, and religion, laying out the ways in which these areas of human life develop not as autonomous spheres but as the result of struggles over a set of political theological choices.

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Elham Manea on Switzerland’s Ban on Face Coverings

By   ·  Thursday, March 11, 2021

To read more in depth from Telos, subscribe to the journal here.

Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Tunku Varadarajan talks with Elham Manea about Switzerland’s recent decision to prohibit the wearing of full facial coverings in public, thereby restricting the burqa and the niqab. Manea’s new book The Perils of Nonviolent Islamism, which investigates the broader context of this decision in comprehensive detail, is now available from Telos Press in our online store for 20% off the list price.

An excerpt from the article:

European democracies differ from America’s in notable ways, and many Americans have reservations about the Swiss prohibition: Aren’t burqa bans an illiberal curbing of religious and expressive freedom? By some reports, fewer than 100 women in Switzerland wear the burqa. Do they constitute so great a threat to the venerable Swiss nation that their constitution, which guarantees freedom of faith and conscience, has to be amended to alter their sartorial practice?

Aware that judgments from afar can sometimes be glib, I put these questions to Elham Manea, author of a book published last month titled The Perils of Nonviolent Islamism. . . . Ms. Manea is quick to dismiss the argument that the ban curbs freedom. You can’t separate the burqa and niqab from their “religious and political contexts” and turn this into “a simple question of ‘choice.'” The burqa didn’t “come out of nowhere” and Muslim women haven’t “decided to embrace it on a whim.” Many Western feminists, she says, tend to “neutralize the context, as if it is of no consequence.” She urges those who are squeamish about the ban to ask which ideology teaches women to cover themselves completely. What are its theological features? What does it say about women?

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New Review of Elham Manea's The Perils of Nonviolent Islamism

By   ·  Tuesday, February 23, 2021

To read more in depth from Telos, subscribe to the journal here.

Writing at the Investigative Project on Terrorism website, Phyllis Chesler reviews Elham Manea’s The Perils of Nonviolent Islamism, now available from Telos Press. Save 20% off the list price when you purchase your copy in our store.

An excerpt of the review:

In The Perils of Nonviolent Islamism, her fourth book in English, the University of Zurich political scientist, author, activist, and consultant offers a warning to the West.

In Manea’s view, “nonviolent Islamism” is the basic building block that leads to violent jihad. And our misreading of that reality can lead to real harm.

If we continue “cancelling” politically incorrect ideas and speech, continue “vilifying dissent,” and “insisting upon the infinite guilt of the West” then, as Russell A. Berman writes in the foreword to this work, “we should expect the real-world consequences of this ideology soon to become clearer and rougher.” Manea believes that repressing dissent can easily turn into repressive practices. “Cancel culture” may indeed be our “Islamism.”

Nonviolent Islamism’s insidious nature is one of Manea’s most important points. Westerners have been hopelessly gullible in their choice of “smiling and patient” Saudi-funded Muslim Brotherhood/Salafi representatives as their go-to experts on both Islam and Muslims.

“One cannot combat an ideology and fundamentalism by working with the very groups that promote that ideology,” she writes. Further, Western cultural relativism and doctrines of “multiculturalism” has served us and freedom-loving Muslims very, very poorly.

This battle, she writes, is “the global challenge of the 21st century.”

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New from Telos Press: Elham Manea's The Perils of Nonviolent Islamism

By   ·  Monday, February 1, 2021

Now available from Telos Press Publishing: The Perils of Nonviolent Islamism, by Elham Manea. Order the paperback edition today in our online store and save 20% off the list price. Also available now in Kindle ebook format at Amazon.com. In today’s episode of the Telos Press Podcast, posted here, David Pan and Russell Berman talk with Elham Manea about her new book.

The Perils of Nonviolent Islamism

by Elham Manea
With a Foreword by Russell A. Berman

Elham Manea’s The Perils of Nonviolent Islamism describes the ways in which nonviolent forms of Islamist fundamentalism in European democracies lay the groundwork for Islamist terrorism. Through a persuasive mixture of autobiography, explanatory frameworks, case studies, personal interviews, and careful readings of source material, Manea details how Islamist groups have exploited the openness of democracies and multiculturalist attitudes in order to create closed Islamist communities. These groups today are transforming Islam in the West into a unified fundamentalist religion that ultimately promotes attitudes that lead to violence. Combining keen social theoretical analysis with critical self-reflection, Manea’s interrogation of Islamism sounds the alarm on a crisis that can no longer be ignored.

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Secularism is an Illusory Defense against the Islamist Will to Conquer

By   ·  Monday, January 4, 2021

This essay appeared in Le Figaro on December 8, 2020, and this translation by Russell A. Berman is published with permission of the author. Hyperlinks are from the original, while footnotes have been added by the translator. Translator’s comments are here.

In the face of a very real Islamist threat that has led to violence and which the proposed law on “separatism” attempts to address, it is interesting to try to raise the level of the debate. It is necessary to inquire calmly into a question that worries those thinkers least inclined to emotional reactions. In contrast to a Christianity drained of its former ambitions, why is it that Islam has not given up its virulent proselytism and instead appears to pose a threat for the future?

This is a threat that de Gaulle already recognized in one of his extraordinary communications to Alain Peyrefitte, when he declared: “We are after all a European people of the white race, Greco-Latin culture, and the Christian religion.” And he considered Algerian independence necessary to prevent his village from being one day renamed “Colombey-the-two-Mosques”—which does not at all mean that he intended to exclude other “races” or religions. He understood France too well to endorse a narrow or xenophobic vision of it.

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