ºÚÁϳԹÏ×ÊÔ´

Rat City by Laury Silvers: A Reading and Discussion of a forthcoming noir detective novella set in an alternative-history medieval Muslim world. 

Rat City

The year is 986H/1578CE and Derya Mack lives and works in Aman-Kala, a plague fortress located between Arab, Persian, and Turkic lands. The Zanj have toppled the Abbasid Caliphate, outlawed slavery, and turned regions and cities into client states. The Zanj Caliphate governs from Baghdad backed up by the force of their empire-wide army. Regional militaries are outlawed and cities are left to govern themselves without police or jails. In Aman-Kala, private detectives solve crimes, large and small. Derya Mack is one of those detectives.

Laury Silvers is a North American Muslim, raised in the United States but finally at home in Canada. Her research and publications as a historian of religion focused on early Islam, early Sufism, and early pious and Sufi women. She taught at Skidmore College and the University of Toronto. Silvers also published work engaging Islam and Gender in North America in academic journals and popular venues, was actively involved in the woman-led prayer movement, and co-founded the . She has since retired from academia and activism and hopes her novels continue her scholarship and activism in their own way. She lives in Toronto under Treaty 13.

Medieval Mayhem: A Conversation about Islamic History, Historical Fiction, and Contemporary Culture with Dr. Laury Silvers, Author of The Sufi Mysteries Quartet, historical mysteries set in Baghdad in the early 10th century. 

Panelists: Drs. Shobhana Xavier (Religion) and Adnan Husain (History).

For more on The Sufi Mysteries Quartet, see .

Laury Silvers is a North American Muslim, raised in the United States but finally at home in Canada. Her research and publications as a historian of religion focused on early Islam, early Sufism, and early pious and Sufi women. She taught at Skidmore College and the University of Toronto. Silvers also published work engaging Islam and Gender in North America in academic journals and popular venues, was actively involved in the woman-led prayer movement, and co-founded the . She has since retired from academia and activism and hopes her novels continue her scholarship and activism in their own way. She lives in Toronto under Treaty 13.

Join us for the Book Launch for  (Pluto Press, 2022) and discussion with author Dr. Mohamed Abdou.

Discourse around Muslims and Islam all too often lapses into a false dichotomy of Orientalist and fundamentalist tropes. A popular reimagining of Islam is urgently needed. Yet it is a perhaps unexpected political philosophical tradition that has the most to offer in this pursuit: anarchism.

Islam and Anarchism is a highly original and interdisciplinary work, which simultaneously disrupts two commonly held beliefs - that Islam is necessarily authoritarian and capitalist; and that anarchism is necessarily anti-religious and anti-spiritual. Deeply rooted in key Islamic concepts and textual sources, and drawing on radical Indigenous, Islamic anarchistic and social movement discourses, Abdou proposes 'Anarcha-Islam'.

Constructing a decolonial, non-authoritarian and non-capitalist Islamic anarchism, Islam and Anarchism philosophically and theologically challenges the classist, sexist, racist, ageist, queerphobic and ableist inequalities in both post- and neo-colonial societies like Egypt, and settler-colonial societies such as Canada and the USA.

Mohamed Abdou is a North African-Egyptian Muslim anarchist activist-scholar.  He is currently a Visiting Scholar and Postdoctoral Fellow in Global Racial Justice at the Einaudi Center at Cornell University.

In celebration of Islamic History Month

A public lecture with Dr. Mohamed Abdou, Postdoctoral Fellow in Global Racial Justice at the Einaudi Center for International Studies at Cornell University. 

In celebration of Islamic History Month Canada and Peace Days - Montreal

Featuring Adnan Husain (Associate Professor, History Department, Queen's University) and Kathleen Ridolfo (Executive Director, Sultan Qaboos Cultural Center, Washington D.C.), in conversation with Bradley Nelson (Chair, Classics Department, Concordia, Montreal).

Concordia, MB 9th Floor, 1450 Guy Street, Montreal or on .

Event Poster

Adnan Husain will present "'Clothes make the Man': Identity and Appearance in the Multicultural Medieval Mediterranean"

This brief talk will examine the connection between dress and appearance with ethnic, religious, and social group identity in the diverse world of the Mediterranean.  It will particularly examine how social hierarchies, inclusion and exclusion, were managed in new ways in part through regulations on clothing and cultural practices in Spain after the forcible conversion of Jews and Muslims to Christianity.  The talk suggests that the politics around what people wear has deep roots in the transition from ethno-religious distinctions to racial difference down to our own day.