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https://bit.ly/ahmed-khanani

Please join us for this talk by Ahmed Khanani, Plowshares Assistant Professor of Politics and co-director of the Center for Social Justice at Earlham College, about their book All Politics Are God’s Politics: Moroccan Islamism and the Sacralization of Democracy.

About the book

Contemporary mass media descriptions of Muslims often suggest that Islam and Muslims are fundamentally undemocratic. Policy-makers in the West have weaponized these descriptions in attempts to legitimize anti-Muslim right-wing policy developments across the West and in the United States in particular, from surveillance in the aftermath of 9/11 to the anti-Islamic travel ban of 2017. But are Muslims undemocratic? Ahmed Khanani argues that this is not the case. In All Politics are God's Politics, Khanani shows that in fact, the opposite holds true: for socially conservative, politically active Muslims (Islamists), democracy or dimuqrāṭiyya reflects and extends their religious values. By drawing on conversations with over 100 Islamists in Morocco, this book enables readers to understand and appreciate the significance of dimuqrāṭiyya as a concept alongside new prospects for Islam and democracy in the Arab Middle East and North Africa (MENA). Khanani's in-depth analysis of the Moroccan case brings these Islamists and their attending political views to the forefront.

About the speaker

Ahmed Khanani is Plowshares Assistant Professor of Politics and co-director of the Center for Social Justice at Earlham College in Richmond, Indiana. Their primary scholarly interests are human rights and democracy in the Muslim Middle East and North Africa. More broadly, their research asks: how do everyday people positioned at the global margins understand and embody key concepts in international politics? They study how peripheral actors (including Islamists in Morocco and LGBTQ communities and peoples in Western democracies) mobilize, inhabit and recode the language and practices of democracy, human rights and sovereignty. All Politics Are God’s Politics: Moroccan Islamism and the Sacralization of Democracy, published by Rutgers University Press in 2021, is their first book.