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In older works on Islamic history, it was not uncommon for academic authors to refer to certain trends within Islam as “orthodox”. While this label, which such studies invariably applied to (specific forms of) Sunnism as opposed to Mu‘tazilism (Gibb 1958; Hitti 1970), certainly has its uses in the study of Islam, its straightforward application…

Concepts have long lost their innocence, not least due to post-modern and post-colonial critique. In the heydays of modernity, researchers tended to presume the universalism of key analytical concepts: every society was thought to have some form of state, some version of religion, art, literature, or science. All of those supposedly universal concepts have been…

On 8 December 2024, the regime of Bashar al-Asad, the president of Syria whose dictatorial rule had been in place for decades (and, before that, his father Hafiz al-Asad’s), ended for good when he was overthrown through a revolution. To commemorate and reflect on this event and its possible implications for the future of Syria,…