Shahzad Bashir, a religious studies professor at Stanford University and a 2015 Andrew Carnegie Fellow, wants to set the record straight: all Muslims are not alike. In an interview with the Humanities at Stanford newsletter, Bashir explained that he has been exploring how the different ways Muslims around the world relate to the past, present, and future illustrate their diversity, and he is writing a book on the topic —Islamic Times: Conceptualizing Pasts and Futures. His research involves works produced in various places in the world, in many languages, and from the earliest Muslim communities to contemporary societies. “I hope that my book will make a convincing case that Islam has multiple histories,” he said. “We should see Muslims as active agents who have constructed their pasts and futures in diverse ways over the centuries.” As a result diversity will be considered a normal aspect of Islam rather than an impossibility or oddity. Read the full interview here.
