Selected Publications & Papers by David H Warren
United States Commission on International Religious Freedom, 2022
This policy report details the growing trend of states like Bahrain, the UAE hosting conferences,... more This policy report details the growing trend of states like Bahrain, the UAE hosting conferences, issuing declarations, sponsoring institutions and leaders - all dedicated to the theme of tolerance. The report puts these states' initiatives in conversation with the wider human rights context, and distinguishes between Religious Tolerance Promotion (RTP) and Freedom of Religion or Belief (ForB) to discuss how the US should best engage this trend
Religion and Politics, 2021
Jadaliyya, 2020
In the early stages of the Arab uprisings, one of the questions frequently posed in the analysis ... more In the early stages of the Arab uprisings, one of the questions frequently posed in the analysis of the mass mobilizations revolved around the role that Islamists would play in post-authoritarian transitions. To that end, when the Critical Currents in Islam page launched in 2013, it featured a roundtable exploring Islamism as a political force that presented a popular challenge to authoritarian rule. As events unfolded and gains of revolutionary movements were rolled back, however, the conversation shifted to the fallout from a resurgent authoritarian wave and its impact on forces of political Islam moving forward. In the interim, a phenomenon that came to demand more attention from observers was the construction of theological arguments and the enlisting of Islamic institutions in support of the authoritarian resurgence. This roundtable facilitates critical discussion on the state of this question ten years after the Arab uprisings.
International Journal of Middle East Studies, 2017
This article contributes to an emerging scholarly debate over the support displayed by key Azhari... more This article contributes to an emerging scholarly debate over the support displayed by key Azhari ulama for the 3 July 2013 coup in Egypt and the subsequent massacres of anticoup protesters. I focus on the Islamic legal justifications articulated by the former grand mufti of Egypt Ali Juma, which academics have contextualized primarily in relation to quietist precedents from late medieval Islamic political thought or his Sufi background. By contrast, I consider Juma's justifications as representative of a nationalist discourse that has its historical origins in the protonationalism of Rifaa al-Tahtawi (d. 1873). My argument has wider implications for our conceptualization of the contemporary Islamic tradition. If, as scholars have argued, the Islamic tradition is a framework for inquiry rather than a set of doctrines, then in the 19th century a concern for the nation and its future became a key part of that framework. I contend that these additions came to redefine the worldview and politics of the ulama in terms of national progress and its horizon of expectations.
Routledge, 2021
Rivals in the Gulf: Yusuf al-Qaradawi, Abdullah Bin Bayyah, and the Qatar-UAE Contest Over the Ar... more Rivals in the Gulf: Yusuf al-Qaradawi, Abdullah Bin Bayyah, and the Qatar-UAE Contest Over the Arab Spring and the Gulf Crisis details the relationships between the Egyptian Shaykh Yusuf al-Qaradawi and the Al Thani royal family in Qatar, and between the Mauritanian Shaykh Abdullah Bin Bayyah and the Al Nahyans, the rulers of Abu Dhabi and senior royal family in the United Arab Emirates. These relationships stretch back decades, to the early 1960s and 1970s respectively. Using this history as a foundation, the book examines the connections between Qaradawi’s and Bin Bayyah’s rival projects and the development of Qatar’s and the UAE’s competing state-brands and foreign policies. It raises questions about how to theorize the relationships between the Muslim scholarly-elite (the ulama) and the nation-state. Over the course of the Arab Spring and the Gulf Crisis, Qaradawi and Bin Bayyah shaped the Al Thani’s and Al Nahyan’s competing ideologies in important ways. Offering new ways for academics to think about Doha and Abu Dhabi as hegemonic centers of Islamic scholarly authority alongside historical centers of learning such as Cairo, Medina, or Qom, this book will appeal to those with an interest in modern Islamic authority, the ulama, Gulf politics, as well as the Arab Spring and its aftermath.
https://www.routledge.com/Rivals-in-the-Gulf-Yusuf-al-Qaradawi-Abdullah-Bin-Bayyah-and-the-Qatar-UAE/Warren/p/book/9780367280628
American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences , 2017
This article analyzes Rifaʿa al-Tahtawi's (d. 1873) idea of Egyptian nationhood (al-ummah al-miṣr... more This article analyzes Rifaʿa al-Tahtawi's (d. 1873) idea of Egyptian nationhood (al-ummah al-miṣriyyah) and key attendant concepts, such as civilization (tamaddun), progress (taqaddum), homeland (waṭan), and citizen (waṭanī). I revisit the intellectual origins of his thought to move our understanding of his intellectual production beyond simply the influence of the European Enlightenment. Instead, I locate al-Tahtawi's work as part of a conversation internal to the debates of the Islamic tradition, which stretches across centuries and was never meant to finish.
The Maydan, 2020
Shaykh Abdullah Bin Bayyah’s justification for Islamic autocracy is far from a throwback to an im... more Shaykh Abdullah Bin Bayyah’s justification for Islamic autocracy is far from a throwback to an imagined premodern world of Muslim scholars united with pious sultans, but rather, deeply indebted to the reformist idioms of Islamic modernism. Indeed, the key reason that modern Islamic autocracy enjoys the success it does, aside from its utility for dictatorial regimes, is that it is articulated via modernist rhetoric and idioms of consultative government, representation, and accountability.
This essay is adapted from the author’s forthcoming book, Rivals in the Gulf: Yusuf al-Qaradawi, Abdullah Bin Bayyah, and the Qatar-UAE Contest over the Arab Spring and the Gulf Crisis.
The Maydan, 2017
Qatar’s support for the Muslim Brotherhood is commonly portrayed as realpolitik, simply part of G... more Qatar’s support for the Muslim Brotherhood is commonly portrayed as realpolitik, simply part of Gulf power politics. However, the personal history of Shaykh Yusuf al-Qaradawi in Qatar, and his influence on Qatari society, is just one example of how the connection between the country and the social movement has a long history.
NMES 4 (2014), Mar 21, 2014
This article aims to explore emerging trends for the Sunni religious elite and the Islamic legal ... more This article aims to explore emerging trends for the Sunni religious elite and the Islamic legal tradition in the new context of the Arab Uprisings by focusing on Yusuf al-Qaradawi, arguably the most prominent of these ʿulamāʾ alive today. The article will follow al-Qaradawi’s articulation, transmission and reconstruction of the Islamic legal tradition in his own discourse as he has attempted to negotiate the politically fraught contexts of the Arab Uprisings while also maintaining his horizontal commitments to a diverse base of supporters be they the wider Arab Muslim public, the Muslim Brotherhood or indeed the Qatari royal family. The article will focus on al-Qaradawi’s highly publicised interventions and fatwas in relation to Egypt, Libya, Bahrain, and Syria from the perspective of Islamic studies, and also draw on personal interviews with al-Qaradawi, his personal staff, as well as supplementary media. In so doing, the article will elucidate al-Qaradawi and his colleagues’ attempts, ranging from the highly creative to the markedly conservative, to respond to unfolding events through the legal tradition and play an increasingly active role in the public sphere while their own status simultaneously becomes ever more vulnerable and unstable.
Contemporary Islam: Dynamics of Muslim Life, 2014
In the wake of the Arab Revolutions of 2011, countries in the Middle East are grappling with how ... more In the wake of the Arab Revolutions of 2011, countries in the Middle East are grappling with how Islamists might be included within a regime of democratic political pluralism and how their aspirations for an “Islamic state” could affect the citizenship status of non-Muslims. While Islamic jurisprudence on this issue has traditionally classified non-Muslims in Islamic society as protected peoples or dhimma, endowed with what the authors term “minority citizenship”, this article will examine how the transnational intellectual Wasatiyya or Centrist movement, of which Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi is the figurehead, have sought to develop a new fiqh of citizenship in which Muslims and non-Muslims have equal civil and political rights. This article will focus on Yusuf al-Qaradawi on the basis that his very recent shift in 2010 on the issue is yet to be studied in depth, as well as in view of the fact that the dilemma faced by reformist Islamic scholars - how to integrate modern concepts into a legal tradition while simultaneously arguing for that tradition’s continuing relevance and authority - is for him rendered particularly acute, given that this tradition is itself the very source of his own authority and relevance. It will therefore be argued that the legacy of the Islamic legal tradition structures his discourse in a very specific way, thereby having the potential to render it more persuasive to his audience, and worthy of a more detailed examination.
Ulema ve 2011-13 Arap İsyanları: İhvânü'l-Müslimîn, İslâm Hukuku Geleneği ve Katar Dış Politikası Bağlamında ‘Global Müftü’ Yusuf Kardâvî’yi Değerlendirmek
Usûl İslam Araştırmaları 18
Translation into Turkish by Ravza Aydın of "The 'Ulamā' and the Arab Uprisings 2011-13: Consideri... more Translation into Turkish by Ravza Aydın of "The 'Ulamā' and the Arab Uprisings 2011-13: Considering Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the Global Mufti, between the Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamic Legal Tradition, and Qatari Foreign Policy"
This is a version of the book chapter published in Adis Duderija (ed.) Maqasid al-Sharia and Cont... more This is a version of the book chapter published in Adis Duderija (ed.) Maqasid al-Sharia and Contemporary Muslim Reformist Thought: An Examination. (New York, NY: Palgrave, 2014) 73-100.
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Selected Publications & Papers by David H Warren
Essay for online journal Religion & Politics.
https://religionandpolitics.org/2021/04/06/when-promoting-religious-freedom-abroad-threatens-minority-communities-back-home/
https://www.routledge.com/Rivals-in-the-Gulf-Yusuf-al-Qaradawi-Abdullah-Bin-Bayyah-and-the-Qatar-UAE/Warren/p/book/9780367280628
This essay is adapted from the author’s forthcoming book, Rivals in the Gulf: Yusuf al-Qaradawi, Abdullah Bin Bayyah, and the Qatar-UAE Contest over the Arab Spring and the Gulf Crisis.