Picking up on Edward Said's claim that the historical experience of empire is common to both the colonizer and the colonized, Peter van der Veer takes the case of religion to examine the mutual impact of Britain's colonization of India on Indian and...

Beginning in 1350, in regions that are now Bihar and Bengal in northeast India, there was produced a vast literature embodying a methodology that not only provides a high point in Indian philosophy but also became extremely influential in many other...

The debates on 'Islam and Modernity' clearly include in their analysis notions of the State. Abdelillah Belkeziz here charts the development of the concept of 'the state' (al-dawlah) in Islamic discourse over the last two centuries. The result is a tour...

First time in paperback: “One of the most ambitious literary projects of this or any age.”—Adam Kirsch, New Republic Here in Robert Alter's bold new translation are some of the most magnificent works in world literature. The astounding poetry in the Book...

The first few decades of the eighteenth century witnessed an important moment in Jewish-Christian relations, as influential Christian scholars increasingly looked to Jewish texts to reveal the truths of their own faith. To what extent could postbiblical...

How well integrated were Jews in the Mediterranean society controlled by ancient Rome? The Torah's laws seem to constitute a rejection of the reciprocity-based social dependency and emphasis on honor that were customary in the ancient Mediterranean world...

The late twentieth century has witnessed the emergence of an unexpected and extraordinary phenomenon: Islamist political movements. Beginning in the early 1970s, militants revolted against the regimes in power throughout the Muslim world and exacerbated...

The world's three great monotheistic religions have spent most of their historical careers in conflict or competition with each other. And yet in fact they sprung from the same spiritual roots and have been nurtured in the same historical soil. This...

Can Islam Be French? is an anthropological examination of how Muslims are responding to the conditions of life in France. Following up on his book Why the French Don't Like Headscarves, John Bowen turns his attention away from the perspectives of French...