Hefner Publishes Review in LA Review of Books
Robert Hefner, Professor of Anthropology and International Relations at the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University, recently published a review essay in Marginalia: The LA Review of Books.
Hefner reviewed Religion as Critique: Islamic Critical Thinking (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2017) by Irfan Ahmad, which addresses the question of Enlightenment and critique in relation to the career and scholarship of Syed Abul A’la Maududi, an Indo-Pakistani regarded as one of the most influential Islamists of the twentieth century. Hefner praised the book, but also posed raised some questions with regard to critique and “everyday enlightenment” in both the Western and Muslim worlds.
Robert Hefner has directed 19 research projects and organized 18 international conferences, and authored or edited nineteen books. He is former president of the Association for Asian Studies. At CURA, he has directed the program on Islam and civil society since 1991; coordinated interdisciplinary research and public policy programs on religion, pluralism, and world affairs; and is currently involved in two research projects: “The New Western Plurality and Civic Coexistence: Muslims, Catholics, and Secularists in North America and Western Europe”; and “Sharia Transitions: Islamic Law and Ethical Plurality in the Contemporary World.” You can read more about him here.