CIK Talks is a platform for noted Muslim intellectuals and thought leaders to address critical issues facing the Ummah and ideas shaping the modern world. 
Disclaimer: All views expressed in CIK Talks are those of the speaker and do not necessarily represent the teachings, views, and opinions of  CIK.

Upcoming Virtual CIK Talk:

Islamic Revival as Development:
Discourses on Islam, Modernity, and Democracy
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Presented by Dr. Ermin Sinanović 
​Friday, January 22nd, 2021 ​at 8 PM EST

​In this Virtual CIK Talk, Dr. Sinanović will explore a developmental reading of Islamic Revival. He will argue that Islamic Revival can be read as the Muslim thinkers’ and activists’ critique of, and engagement with modernity. He will further make the case for multiple modernities and multiple Islamic discourses that have marked the last six decades of Muslim activism. Islamic Revival according to Dr. Sinanović has gone through three distinct periods during this time:
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  • Modernization–development phase (early 1950s–early 1980s) - Debates on capitalism, communism, and political development in general,
    within the contexts of post-colonial liberation and the Cold War struggles. 
  • Democratization phase (early 1980s–early 2000s) - Emphasis on democracy, economic development, and human rights. 
  • The civic engagement and citizenship phase (early 2000s – present) - Conversation with modernity is on civic engagement and citizenship rights. 

​Through these three periods, this Virtual CIK Talk will trace the evolution of Islamic Revival from its often reactive past to the more proactive present.

About the Presenter:

​Dr. Ermin Sinanović is executive director of the Center for Islam in the Contemporary World (CICW) at Shenandoah University, where he is also Scholar in Residence. Before joining CICW, he was director of research and academic programs at the International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT). He was also a faculty associate in research, Southeast Asian Program at Cornell University.

Sinanović studied for a Master of Arts and a Ph.D. in Political Science at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, Syracuse University. He obtained two bachelor's degrees (one in the Qur’an and Sunnah studies, the other in political science) from the International Islamic University Malaysia, and a master's degree in Islamic civilization from the International Institute of Islamic Thought and Civilization (ISTAC) in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

Sinanović’s research interests include transnational Islamic revival, revival and reform in Islam, Islamic political thought, Southeast Asian politics, Islam and politics, and leadership in higher education. His work has been published in peer-reviewed journals and in edited volumes, including Politics, Religion and Ideology, Muslim-Christian Relations, American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences, and Encyclopedia of Islam and the Muslim World. 

Sinanović sits on editorial boards of two academic journals: Politics, Religion and Ideology (Taylor & Francis) and Context (Center for Advanced Studies, Sarajevo). He has reviewed book manuscripts and articles for Edinburgh University Press, Routledge, Palgrave Macmillan USA, American Political Science Review, Journal of Global Ethics, and Journal of Muslims in Europe, among others.

Previous Talks

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Dr. Katherine Bullock is a Lecturer in the Department of Political Science at the University of Toronto, where she also completed her Ph.D. Her teaching focus is political Islam from a global perspective, and her research focuses on Muslims in Canada, their history, contemporary lived experiences, political and civic engagement, debates on the veil, and media representations of Islam and Muslims.  She was the editor of the American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences (www.ajiss.org) from 2003 – 2008 and the Vice-President of the Association of Muslim Social Scientists of North America (www.naaims.org) from 2006 - 2009.
 
Her publications include Muslim Women Activists in North America: Speaking for Ourselves (University of Texas Press) and Rethinking Muslim Women and the Veil: Challenging Historical and Modern Stereotypes (International Institute of Islamic Thought), which has been translated into Arabic, French, and Turkish. She is also the Director of Research of the Tessellate Institute (www.tessellateinstitute.com), a research institute that explores and documents the lived experiences of Muslims in Canada and the President of Compass Books (www.compassbooks.ca), dedicated to publishing top-quality books about Islam and Muslims in English. Originally from Australia, she lives in Oakville with her husband and children. She embraced Islam in 1994.
Professor Ovamir Anjum is Imam Khattab Endowed Chair of Islamic Studies at the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies, University of Toledo. His work focuses on the nexus of theology, ethics, politics and law in classical and medieval Islam, with comparative interest in Western Thought. His interests are united by a common theoretical focus on epistemology or views of intellect/reason in various domains of Islamic thought, ranging from politics (siyasa), law (fiqh), theology (kalam), falsafa (Islamic philosophy) and spirituality (Sufism, mysticism, and asceticism). He brings this historical studies to bear on issues in contemporary Islamic thought and movements and is currently researching developments in Islamic political thought in the wake of the Arab Uprisings of 2011. While trained as an historian, his work is essentially interdisciplinary, drawing on the fields of classical Islamic studies, political philosophy, and cultural anthropology. 
 
He obtained his Ph.D. in Islamic Intellectual history in the Department of History, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Masters in Social Sciences from the University of Chicago and Masters in Computer Science from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is the author of  Politics, Law and Community in Islamic Thought: The Taymiyyan Moment (Cambridge University Press, 2012). His current projects include one forthcoming edited volume on Islam after the 2011 Arab Uprisings and a monograph on the foundations of modern Islamic political thought. He is also near-completing a decade-long project to translate a popular Islamic spiritual and theological classic, Madarij al-Salikin (Ranks of Divine Seekers) by Ibn al-Qayyim (d. 1351), which, upon completion, would be the largest single-author English translation of a classical Islamic text. Dr. Ovamir is a Co-Editor of the American Journal of Islam and Society and a Senior Fellow and Editor in Chief at the Yaqeen Institute for Islamic Research.
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Professor Mohammad H. Fadel is Professor at the University of Toronto's Faculty of Law, which he joined in January 2006. Professor Fadel wrote his Ph.D. dissertation on legal process in medieval Islamic law while at the University of Chicago and received his JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. Professor Fadel was admitted to the Bar of New York in 2000 and practiced law with the firm of Sullivan & Cromwell LLP in New York, New York, where he worked on a wide variety of corporate finance transactions and securities-related regulatory investigations. Professor Fadel also served as a law clerk to the Honorable Paul V. Niemeyer of the United States Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit and the Honorable Anthony A. Alaimo of the United States District Court for the Southern District of Georgia. Professor Fadel has published numerous articles in Islamic legal history and Islam and liberalism.