Distinguished Scholar Joseph Massad Gives Public Lecture at SFS-Q
Recognized as an intellectual voice of great magnitude inside and outside of academic circles, Joseph Massad is a distinguished Columbia University professor and an author of four books and numerous academic articles. Speaking about the subject his latest book delves into, Prof. Massad gave a public lecture at Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar (SFS-Q) on the topic of Islam and the Choice of Liberalism.
Abdullah Al-Arian, Assistant Professor of History at SFS-Q, introduced the distinguished scholar to the audience referring to Prof. Massad’s work as “cutting-edge scholarship and incisive political commentary on a range of diverse issues that are of much relevance to the areas of study at SFS-Q.”
In exploring how Islam figures in the constitution of liberalism, the lecture showed the choice that liberalism as ideology and as political regimes that speak in its name offer and impose on Muslims, one of choosing between liberalism or “Islam.” Prof. Massad’s lecture argued that Islam is a major constituent of liberalism ever since the latter emerged as an ideology and as a political order, a constituent that had to be rejected and disavowed as an other in order for liberalism’s self to emerge
In response to the question of whether he believes that his new book has social applicability to Qatar and its current position on the world’s stage, Prof. Massad said, “I believe that the subject matter discussed in my book is of much concern to the population of this region in general. The way I argue that liberalism constitutes Islam and the kind of connections that are made to Islam as a type of regime has much relevance to Qatar and the entire Arab world.”
Massad is a professor of Modern Arab Politics and Intellectual History at Columbia University. His books include Colonial Effects: The Making of National Identity in Jordan (2001), The Persistence of the Palestinian Question (2006), Desiring Arabs (2007) which won the Lionnel Trilling Award, and Islam in Liberalism (2015). Prof. Massad is also a regular contributor of articles and op-eds to Al-Jazeera English website, the Al-Ahram Weekly based in Cairo, the Lebanese newspaper Al-Akhbar among others. His books and articles have been translated to many languages including Arabic, French, German, Japanese, Turkish, Persian, Spanish, Italian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Swedish, and Dutch.