Sayyid
Biographic Data
| ID | 129844 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Sayyid |
| FAMILY NAME | Sayyid |
| SIGNATURE | SAYYID |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Leeds |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-8648-3335 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 26 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 77 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 26 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1998 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Exchanges with SherAli Tareen
Countering Islamophobia in Europe
The Critique of Religion and Religion as Critique
There is much to admire in Irfan Ahmad’s Religion as Critique. In a world organized by the global institution of Islamophobia, a book that treats Maududi as a serious political thinker rather than
Islamophobia and the Europeanness of the other Europe
In this article, Sayyid’s focus is on the relationship between the emergence of Islamophobia and the crisis of Europeanness. What is it about Europeanness right now that makes one of its most vocal expressions an insistence on the Muslim question? To answer, or perhaps address, the question of why the Muslim question and why now, Sayyid places the formation of European identity in a postcolonial context. That is, the horizon opened by the decentr…
Political Islam in the Aftermath of “Islamic State”
The rapid contraction of the territorial extent of the Islamic state seems to have dented its claims to have restored the caliphate. The question that this raises is what does the end of the Islamic state mean for political Islam in general. To address this question, this article will provide an account of the degree to which political Islam can be distinguished from the fate of the Islamic state group. In the process, it will put forward an anal…
Post-racial paradoxes
The advent of a post-racial understanding of racism has changed the way in which Europe sees itself and its ethnic minorities. The concept of the post-racial emerged in the United States to describe a belief that America was no longer a racist society and the election of Barack Obama to the highest office in the land was a public and highly visible confirmation of that state of affairs. A global post-racial culture has taken hold of western pluto…
A Fundamental Fear
This is a brilliant and provocative re-evaluation of political Islam. Theoretically innovative, the book shows how Islamism can only be understood in the context of its relation with Eurocentrism. Using a neopragmatist approach inspired by Richard Rorty, and drawing on political and cultural theorists such as Stuart Hall, Agnes Heller and J.F. Lyotard, the book disrupts the conventional accounts of modernity and postmodernity and presents a radic…
A Critical Introduction to Khomeini
As the architect of the Iranian Revolution of 1979, Ayatollah Khomeini remains one of the most inspirational and enigmatic figures of the twentieth century. The revolution placed Iran at the forefront of Middle East politics and the Islamic revival. Twenty years after his death, Khomeini is revered as a spiritual and political figurehead in Iran and in large swathes of the Islamic world, while in the West he is remembered by many as a dictator an…
A Measure of Islamophobia
The growing literature on Islamophobia is dominated by empirical studies, the analysis of media representations and socio-psychological approaches, while many of these studies have been valuable in illustrating the range of expressions of Islamophobia; they have been less successful in understanding the phenomena, and mapping its relationship with other forms of discriminatory practices such as racism and anti-Semitism. This article presents a co…
Empire, Islam, and the Postcolonial
Postcolonial studies has been dominated by the example of the European colonial empires. In the wake of the ‘war on terror’, a revisionist narrative has developed which reads Islamicate imperialism as being analogous to European colonialism. The effect of this is both to legitimate western imperialism in the past and to make a case for its necessity in the present as a bulwark against Islamism. This chapter explores the challenges of reading the …
Racism, Governance, and Public Policy
The Dynamics of a Postcolonial War
AcknowledgementsI would like to thank Warren Chin for his encouragement and patience and Shvetal Vyas-Pare for her editing skills and good humour
Governing ghosts
In this article we are not concerned with the management of extremists, but with the regulation of wider populations stereotyped as extreme based on the conflation of difference with politicality. Attempts to regulate racialized populations by excising the political surplus seen as constituting excessive Muslim difference are viewed in the context of a Muslim identity politics that places the ontology of the social into crisis by challenging the …
Dis-Orienting Clusters of Civility
Into what kind of narrative can we fit the recent eruption of the so-called `Arab street' into the public square? It is easy to argue that the reason why we are not certain what the story of the `Arab spring' is, is because it is too early to tell, and there is a degree of merit in this position; however, this simply defers rather than addresses the question. The problem with the recent popular mobilisations that swept many parts of Muslimistan i…
Answering the Muslim question
Since at least the 1990s, there has been a huge growth in interest about the Muslim presence in Western plutocracies. Part of this interest has been due to series of moral panics which have centred on the figure of the Muslim. The mobilisation of Muslims as Muslims has raised questions about national identity and belonging. Increasing interest is also due to the way in which the security threat - as posited by the „war on terror‟ - has been focus…
Islam(ism), Eurocentrism and the World Order
Almost from its inception, Islamism has been seen as a strange sort of fad that will imminently disappear, and one cannot help but notice how, at regular intervals, one encounters commentaries decl
Racist futures
The key theme addressed in this Special Issue is how to theorize and understand the contemporary power, persistence and durability of racism. This piece provides an introduction to a collection of papers, which have been selected from Papers given at the Racist Futures programme of conferences, seminars and events organized by the Centre for Ethnicity and Racism Studies at the University of Leeds through 2004 and 2005
Rituals, Ideals, and Reading the Qur’an
This article discusses the role of the Qur’anic text in a Muslim’s life and why it should be viewed as a non-linear text designed to guide humanity, rather than as the foundation for a political order or a set of iron-clad laws for ruling a society
After Babel
In 1998, Muhammad Khatami, at the time President of Iran, gave an interview to CNN. In this interview Khatami attempted to appeal to the American people as a way of bypassing the policy of containment of Iran. Khatami used the work of Tocqueville to demonstrate homology between principles that underlay the foundation of both the United States and the Islamic Republic of Iran. More generally, Khatami hoped that a dialogue of civilizations would re…
Islam and Knowledge
Mirror, mirror
The article examines the relationship between political forms and cultural identity. It sets out to explore the way in which notions of ‘democracy’ and despotism are associated with distinct cultural formations. The identity of a political regime is less a matter of its political practices and procedures and more a function of the extent to which it can be considered ‘western’ or ‘oriental’. Given this intimate relationship between democracy and …
Islam(ismo), eurocentrismo e ordem mundial1
Os exemplos de mobilização política levada a cabo sob a bandeira do Islão têm sido vistos das mais variadas formas: como uma forma de fascismo, como uma forma de fundamentalismo, como uma forma de ressentimento, ou como uma forma de patologia. A incapacidade de tratar o Islamismo como algo mais do que um conjunto de reacções patológicas a certos desenvolvimentos ocorridos no mundo significa que, enquanto objecto de análise, ele permanece obscuro.…
Displacing South Asia
This paper introduces ‘Displacement’, a special themed issue of Contemporary South Asia with contributors and a guest editor who are all members of the British Association for South Asian Studies (BASAS). The paper outlines the use of the notion of displacement as a way of understanding aspects of the politics of South Asia and its Diaspora. Displacement is presented as both an empirical and conceptual category that may be used to describe the mo…
Ancestor worship and the irony of the 'Islamic Republic' of Pakistan
In recent years, political conflict in Pakistan (along with much of the Muslim world) has increasingly taken the form of an explicit contest between forces that advocate a social order that is centred around Islam, and those that oppose the establishment of such an order. In the context of this struggle, it is often argued that the founder of the country, Mohammed Ali Jinnah, would have opposed any attempt to establish an Islamist state. As such,…
Symposium on 11 September 2001 Terrorism, Islam and the West
Islamophobia and the Europeanness of the other Europe
In this article, Sayyid’s focus is on the relationship between the emergence of Islamophobia and the crisis of Europeanness. What is it about Europeanness right now that makes one of its most vocal expressions an insistence on the Muslim question? To answer, or perhaps address, the question of why the Muslim question and why now, Sayyid places the formation of European identity in a postcolonial context. That is, the horizon opened by the decentr…
Post-racial paradoxes
The advent of a post-racial understanding of racism has changed the way in which Europe sees itself and its ethnic minorities. The concept of the post-racial emerged in the United States to describe a belief that America was no longer a racist society and the election of Barack Obama to the highest office in the land was a public and highly visible confirmation of that state of affairs. A global post-racial culture has taken hold of western pluto…
Governing ghosts
In this article we are not concerned with the management of extremists, but with the regulation of wider populations stereotyped as extreme based on the conflation of difference with politicality. Attempts to regulate racialized populations by excising the political surplus seen as constituting excessive Muslim difference are viewed in the context of a Muslim identity politics that places the ontology of the social into crisis by challenging the …
Mirror, mirror
The article examines the relationship between political forms and cultural identity. It sets out to explore the way in which notions of ‘democracy’ and despotism are associated with distinct cultural formations. The identity of a political regime is less a matter of its political practices and procedures and more a function of the extent to which it can be considered ‘western’ or ‘oriental’. Given this intimate relationship between democracy and …
Symposium on 11 September 2001 Terrorism, Islam and the West
Islam(ism), Eurocentrism and the World Order
Almost from its inception, Islamism has been seen as a strange sort of fad that will imminently disappear, and one cannot help but notice how, at regular intervals, one encounters commentaries decl
Racist futures
The key theme addressed in this Special Issue is how to theorize and understand the contemporary power, persistence and durability of racism. This piece provides an introduction to a collection of papers, which have been selected from Papers given at the Racist Futures programme of conferences, seminars and events organized by the Centre for Ethnicity and Racism Studies at the University of Leeds through 2004 and 2005
The Dynamics of a Postcolonial War
AcknowledgementsI would like to thank Warren Chin for his encouragement and patience and Shvetal Vyas-Pare for her editing skills and good humour
After Babel
In 1998, Muhammad Khatami, at the time President of Iran, gave an interview to CNN. In this interview Khatami attempted to appeal to the American people as a way of bypassing the policy of containment of Iran. Khatami used the work of Tocqueville to demonstrate homology between principles that underlay the foundation of both the United States and the Islamic Republic of Iran. More generally, Khatami hoped that a dialogue of civilizations would re…
Ancestor worship and the irony of the 'Islamic Republic' of Pakistan
In recent years, political conflict in Pakistan (along with much of the Muslim world) has increasingly taken the form of an explicit contest between forces that advocate a social order that is centred around Islam, and those that oppose the establishment of such an order. In the context of this struggle, it is often argued that the founder of the country, Mohammed Ali Jinnah, would have opposed any attempt to establish an Islamist state. As such,…
Dis-Orienting Clusters of Civility
Into what kind of narrative can we fit the recent eruption of the so-called `Arab street' into the public square? It is easy to argue that the reason why we are not certain what the story of the `Arab spring' is, is because it is too early to tell, and there is a degree of merit in this position; however, this simply defers rather than addresses the question. The problem with the recent popular mobilisations that swept many parts of Muslimistan i…
Islam and Knowledge
Islam(ismo), eurocentrismo e ordem mundial1
Os exemplos de mobilização política levada a cabo sob a bandeira do Islão têm sido vistos das mais variadas formas: como uma forma de fascismo, como uma forma de fundamentalismo, como uma forma de ressentimento, ou como uma forma de patologia. A incapacidade de tratar o Islamismo como algo mais do que um conjunto de reacções patológicas a certos desenvolvimentos ocorridos no mundo significa que, enquanto objecto de análise, ele permanece obscuro.…
Anti‐essentialism and universalism
One of the most common complaints made against Islamists is that they present themselves as advocates of cultural authenticity, but in reality their projects are riddled with Western influences. These attempts to show the constructed inaulhentic and essentializing nature of Islamists are made by people who tend to reproduce unproblematic notions regarding the nature of Western identity. Thus, often those who accuse Islamists of acts in bad faith …
Ancestor worship and the irony of the 'Islamic Republic' of Pakistan
In recent years, political conflict in Pakistan (along with much of the Muslim world) has increasingly taken the form of an explicit contest between forces that advocate a social order that is centred around Islam, and those that oppose the establishment of such an order. In the context of this struggle, it is often argued that the founder of the country, Mohammed Ali Jinnah, would have opposed any attempt to establish an Islamist state. As such,…
Symposium on 11 September 2001 Terrorism, Islam and the West
Displacing South Asia
This paper introduces ‘Displacement’, a special themed issue of Contemporary South Asia with contributors and a guest editor who are all members of the British Association for South Asian Studies (BASAS). The paper outlines the use of the notion of displacement as a way of understanding aspects of the politics of South Asia and its Diaspora. Displacement is presented as both an empirical and conceptual category that may be used to describe the mo…
Islam(ismo), eurocentrismo e ordem mundial1
Os exemplos de mobilização política levada a cabo sob a bandeira do Islão têm sido vistos das mais variadas formas: como uma forma de fascismo, como uma forma de fundamentalismo, como uma forma de ressentimento, ou como uma forma de patologia. A incapacidade de tratar o Islamismo como algo mais do que um conjunto de reacções patológicas a certos desenvolvimentos ocorridos no mundo significa que, enquanto objecto de análise, ele permanece obscuro.…
Mirror, mirror
The article examines the relationship between political forms and cultural identity. It sets out to explore the way in which notions of ‘democracy’ and despotism are associated with distinct cultural formations. The identity of a political regime is less a matter of its political practices and procedures and more a function of the extent to which it can be considered ‘western’ or ‘oriental’. Given this intimate relationship between democracy and …
Rituals, Ideals, and Reading the Qur’an
This article discusses the role of the Qur’anic text in a Muslim’s life and why it should be viewed as a non-linear text designed to guide humanity, rather than as the foundation for a political order or a set of iron-clad laws for ruling a society
After Babel
In 1998, Muhammad Khatami, at the time President of Iran, gave an interview to CNN. In this interview Khatami attempted to appeal to the American people as a way of bypassing the policy of containment of Iran. Khatami used the work of Tocqueville to demonstrate homology between principles that underlay the foundation of both the United States and the Islamic Republic of Iran. More generally, Khatami hoped that a dialogue of civilizations would re…
Islam and Knowledge
Islam(ism), Eurocentrism and the World Order
Almost from its inception, Islamism has been seen as a strange sort of fad that will imminently disappear, and one cannot help but notice how, at regular intervals, one encounters commentaries decl
Racist futures
The key theme addressed in this Special Issue is how to theorize and understand the contemporary power, persistence and durability of racism. This piece provides an introduction to a collection of papers, which have been selected from Papers given at the Racist Futures programme of conferences, seminars and events organized by the Centre for Ethnicity and Racism Studies at the University of Leeds through 2004 and 2005
Answering the Muslim question
Since at least the 1990s, there has been a huge growth in interest about the Muslim presence in Western plutocracies. Part of this interest has been due to series of moral panics which have centred on the figure of the Muslim. The mobilisation of Muslims as Muslims has raised questions about national identity and belonging. Increasing interest is also due to the way in which the security threat - as posited by the „war on terror‟ - has been focus…
Dis-Orienting Clusters of Civility
Into what kind of narrative can we fit the recent eruption of the so-called `Arab street' into the public square? It is easy to argue that the reason why we are not certain what the story of the `Arab spring' is, is because it is too early to tell, and there is a degree of merit in this position; however, this simply defers rather than addresses the question. The problem with the recent popular mobilisations that swept many parts of Muslimistan i…
Governing ghosts
In this article we are not concerned with the management of extremists, but with the regulation of wider populations stereotyped as extreme based on the conflation of difference with politicality. Attempts to regulate racialized populations by excising the political surplus seen as constituting excessive Muslim difference are viewed in the context of a Muslim identity politics that places the ontology of the social into crisis by challenging the …
Empire, Islam, and the Postcolonial
Postcolonial studies has been dominated by the example of the European colonial empires. In the wake of the ‘war on terror’, a revisionist narrative has developed which reads Islamicate imperialism as being analogous to European colonialism. The effect of this is both to legitimate western imperialism in the past and to make a case for its necessity in the present as a bulwark against Islamism. This chapter explores the challenges of reading the …
Racism, Governance, and Public Policy
The Dynamics of a Postcolonial War
AcknowledgementsI would like to thank Warren Chin for his encouragement and patience and Shvetal Vyas-Pare for her editing skills and good humour
A Critical Introduction to Khomeini
As the architect of the Iranian Revolution of 1979, Ayatollah Khomeini remains one of the most inspirational and enigmatic figures of the twentieth century. The revolution placed Iran at the forefront of Middle East politics and the Islamic revival. Twenty years after his death, Khomeini is revered as a spiritual and political figurehead in Iran and in large swathes of the Islamic world, while in the West he is remembered by many as a dictator an…
A Measure of Islamophobia
The growing literature on Islamophobia is dominated by empirical studies, the analysis of media representations and socio-psychological approaches, while many of these studies have been valuable in illustrating the range of expressions of Islamophobia; they have been less successful in understanding the phenomena, and mapping its relationship with other forms of discriminatory practices such as racism and anti-Semitism. This article presents a co…
A Fundamental Fear
This is a brilliant and provocative re-evaluation of political Islam. Theoretically innovative, the book shows how Islamism can only be understood in the context of its relation with Eurocentrism. Using a neopragmatist approach inspired by Richard Rorty, and drawing on political and cultural theorists such as Stuart Hall, Agnes Heller and J.F. Lyotard, the book disrupts the conventional accounts of modernity and postmodernity and presents a radic…
Political Islam in the Aftermath of “Islamic State”
The rapid contraction of the territorial extent of the Islamic state seems to have dented its claims to have restored the caliphate. The question that this raises is what does the end of the Islamic state mean for political Islam in general. To address this question, this article will provide an account of the degree to which political Islam can be distinguished from the fate of the Islamic state group. In the process, it will put forward an anal…
Post-racial paradoxes
The advent of a post-racial understanding of racism has changed the way in which Europe sees itself and its ethnic minorities. The concept of the post-racial emerged in the United States to describe a belief that America was no longer a racist society and the election of Barack Obama to the highest office in the land was a public and highly visible confirmation of that state of affairs. A global post-racial culture has taken hold of western pluto…
Islamophobia and the Europeanness of the other Europe
In this article, Sayyid’s focus is on the relationship between the emergence of Islamophobia and the crisis of Europeanness. What is it about Europeanness right now that makes one of its most vocal expressions an insistence on the Muslim question? To answer, or perhaps address, the question of why the Muslim question and why now, Sayyid places the formation of European identity in a postcolonial context. That is, the horizon opened by the decentr…
Countering Islamophobia in Europe
The Critique of Religion and Religion as Critique
There is much to admire in Irfan Ahmad’s Religion as Critique. In a world organized by the global institution of Islamophobia, a book that treats Maududi as a serious political thinker rather than
Political science (22 works) · Sociology (22 works) · Law (20 works) · Philosophy (15 works) · Politics (15 works) · Islamic Studies and History (13 works) · Islam (12 works) · Gender Studies (10 works) · Law (10 works) · Philosophy (9 works)