Books by Ali (New York University) Mirsepassi

Challenging the prevailing view of pre-Revolution Iran, this new perspective on Iranian politics and culture in the 1960s and 70s documents how the Pahlavi State adopted 'Westoxification' discourses to present ideological alternatives to modern and Western-inspired cultural attitudes in Iran.

Ahmad Fardid (1910-94), an 'anti-Western' philosopher, became the self-proclaimed philosophical spokesperson for the Islamic Republic, coining the term 'Westoxication'. With thirteen interviews relating his colourful life and intellectual legacy, Mirsepassi sheds light on Iran's twentieth-century intellectual and political self-construction.

An account of the rise of political Islam in modern Iran, following the intellectual journey of the philosopher Ahmad Fardid. This book will be of use to scholars in courses studying modern Iran, political Islam and the politics of the Middle East, philosophy, post-colonial studies, religious studies and social theory.

This book presents a critical study of citizenship, state and globalization in societies that have been historically influenced by Islamic traditions and institutions. Interrogating the work of contemporary theorists of Islamic modernity such as Mohammed Arkoun, Abdul an-Na'im, Fatima Mernissi, Talal Asad, Saba Mahmood and Aziz Al-Azmeh, this book explores the debate on Islam, democracy and modernity, contextualized within contemporary Muslim lifeworlds. These include contemporary Turkey (following the 9/11 attacks and the onset of war in Afghanistan), multicultural France (2009-10 French burqa debate), Egypt (the 2011 Tahrir Square mass mobilizations), and India. Ali Mirsepassi and Tadd Graham Fernee critique particular counterproductive ideological conceptualizations, voicing an emerging global ethic of reconciliation. Rejecting the polarized conceptual ideals of the universal or the authentic, the authors critically reassess notions of the secular, the cosmopolitan and democracy. Raising questions that cut across the disciplines of history, anthropology, sociology and law, this study articulates a democratic politics of everyday life in modern Islamic societies.

This book presents a powerful challenge to the dominant media and scholarly construction of radical Islamist politics as a purely Islamic phenomenon derived from insular, traditional and monolithic religious 'foundations'. It argues that the discourse of political Islam has strong connections to important and disturbing currents in Western philosophy and intellectual trends.