ABSTRACT Khiṭābat (oratory) is a regular and integral part of the ritual lives of Urdu-speaking Shiʿa devotees in contemporary Karachi, Pakistan. Drawing on twenty months of ethnographic fieldwork, I argue that indexicality, the physical relationship between a sign and its context of use, is necessary to any analysis of oratory. My emphasis on the physical contexts redresses the existing emphasis on referentiality (meaning) or pragmatism (function) with which scholars approach oratory. I make my argument by attending to the ways in which the first, fifth, seventh, and ninth Shiʿi imams, the male descendants of Prophet Muhammad and around whom the Twelver Shiʿi tradition later coalesced, were invoked by orators during my fieldwork, with each invocation indelibly intertwined with the physical contexts in which it took place.

ABSTRACT This article provides a comprehensive overview of the Chinese Christian Book of the Messiah’s doctrinal framework, demonstrating how its author portrays the prohibition against meat consumption and animal sacrifice as an eternal divine commandment. It subsequently establishes parallels with the Pseudo-Clementine Homilies and Recognitions. The article argues that both works exemplify the strategic adaptation of early anti-sacrificial motifs as rhetorical tools for religious boundary-marking, contributing to our understanding of how Jesus-oriented groups deployed theological resources to distinguish themselves from surrounding polytheistic practices across diverse cultural settings.

ABSTRACT This article argues that comedy can and does become a route for socioreligious activism and authority. It specifically examines how four American Muslim “ethicist” comedians—Yasmin Elhady, Moses the Comic, Preacher Moss, and Omar Regan—cultivate a virtuous self within a discourse that is distinctly Muslim and participate in the proliferation of religious authority. To establish the import of the ethical work that these comedians accomplish, this study analyzes three processes of authorization that are captured by the paradigms of rhetoric, celebrity, and religio-tainment. In the context of affective economies in which audiences are addressed as believers, the comic rhetors draw their authority from the audience’s investment in their recognition and recognizability, moral credentials, epistemic trustworthiness, and—of course—comic abilities. By cultivating an art form that fosters ethical collective and self-improvement, this study argues that American Muslim ethicist comedy enters the repertoire of da‘wa.

ABSTRACT This article examines Rabbi Yitzchak Ginsburgh’s “Fourth Revolution,” a transformative theological vision that he positions as the culmination of Jewish history and the advent of the messianic age. Drawing on Kabbalistic concepts, Hasidic interpretations, and contemporary sociopolitical contexts, Ginsburgh redefines traditional notions of Torah, conversion, and redemption. Central to his revolution is the integration of internal spiritual renewal with external messianic activism, including the mass conversion of non-Jews. Through a close reading of his writings and teachings, the article situates Ginsburgh within the broader framework of Chabad theology and Israeli religious nationalism while critically engaging with the implications of his ideas for Jewish identity and interfaith dynamics. This analysis highlights both the radical and contentious dimensions of Ginsburgh’s thought, offering insight into its theological, political, and eschatological significance.

ABSTRACT This article examines the role of compassion for animals in the earliest Buddhist texts to proscribe meat eating. I argue that compassion features prominently as a justification for vegetarianism in these texts but that it is typically framed as benefiting the practitioner as much as—if not more than—the animals themselves. To clarify how compassion operates in these texts, I propose a new typology: subject-oriented compassion, which emphasizes karmic consequences and the personal benefits of cultivating compassion, and object-oriented compassion, which centers animal suffering and enjoins audiences to have empathy for animals. This approach encourages us to understand Buddhist compassion not as a monolithic concept but as a capacious category encompassing multiple orientations toward sentient life.

ABSTRACT This article examines the role of education in fueling Black American Muslims’ efforts to achieve self-determination. It focuses on the Dar-ul-Islam Movement, a community that was active from 1962 to 1983 and, before 1975, comprised the largest national network of Black Sunni Muslims in the US. I argue that the movement’s educational efforts—which included independent schools as well as programs for youth and adults—were key to actualizing its vision of carving out sacred urban geographies where they could live freely without interference from the state. The Dar’s praxis challenges scholarship that silos Black and Muslim intellectual discourses, as well as those that separate religious ideologies from political visions. Instead, through a focus on the movement’s educational efforts during the Black Power era, I show how the Dar fused theological, moral, material, and sociopolitical concerns to actualize collective liberation for Black Muslims in the urban US.

ABSTRACT No text in the Hebrew Bible is more central to the discussion of captives taken during war than Deuteronomy 21:10–14. This article addresses the scholarly reception of the text, revealing the ways biblical scholars recognize the social meaning of the captive’s experience but ultimately find themselves unwilling to acknowledge her enslaved status. This is partly the result of an overreliance on a narrowly philological approach to the text in isolation. Rather than attending to the violent conditions described in this law, scholars have tended to endorse interpretations that affirm the perspective of the perpetrator. This article argues that there is ample evidence in both ancient West Asian sources as well as in the Islamic practice of istibrāʾ to show that head shaving in Deuteronomy 21:10–14 is part of the captive’s transition to the status of an enslaved person. By attending to the haptic conditions faced by the captive, this article elucidates the striking cross-cultural similarities between rituals that are imposed specifically on foreign women and girls who are then enslaved after they are traded or captured in war.