Will Sherman

on jan 29, will sherman (@willsherman.bsky.social) delivered the annual scudder lecture at uf's department of religion

a brilliant, groundbreaking talk, will used examples of quranic imitations from late antiquity to the present to transform how we understand revelation & scriptural inimitability

Such is the nature of force. Its power of converting a man into a thing is a double one, and in its application double-edged. To the same degree, though in different fashions, those who use it and those who endure it are turned to stone.

archive.org/stream/Simon...

The conquering soldier is like a scourge of nature. Possessed by war, he, like the slave, becomes a thing, though his manner of doing so is different—over him too, words are as powerless as over matter itself. Both, at the touch of force, experience its inevitable effects: they become deaf and dumb.

Force is as pitiless to the man who possesses it, or thinks he does, as it is to its victims; the second it crushes, the first it intoxicates. The truth is, nobody really possesses it.

Thank you!

Afghanistan: Vol 7, No 2

Hey all, I’ll do the intro thing: my name is Will and I wrote a book about language and revelation among some mystics and messiahs in early modern Afghanistan. The book—*Singing with the Mountains*—was the subject of an open-access forum with some awesome scholars.
www.euppublishing.com/toc/afg/7/2

Singing with the Mountains An illuminating story of a Sufi community that sought the revelation of God.In the Afghan highlands of the sixteenth century, the messianic community known a...

And here’s a link to the book if you want to buy it (wink wink do NOT ask me to send you a digital copy for free wink wink) www.fordhampress.com/978153150568...

Afghanistan: Vol 7, No 2

I was very grateful to have some brilliant colleagues engage the book in a forum for the journal *Afghanistan.* Check it out! www.euppublishing.com/toc/afg/7/2

Amazing. Would you please add me? I work on religion in early modern Afghanistan and the Mughal world. Thanks!

Working with Taylor & Francis is simply unethical by this point. It’s unfortunately difficult to have AI use revoked from existing contracts but at least try, complain, if you have a book with them. And otherwise do not even consider.

12th c. Berber speakers called the watermelon "Palestine"; their Andalusi Arabic-speaking contemporaries called it "the Palestinian melon".

journals.pan.pl/dlibra/publi...

“It therefore falls to literary criticism to continue to compare the inside and the outside, existence and history, to continue to pass judgment on the abstract quality of life in the present, and to keep alive the idea of a concrete future. May it prove equal to the task!” —RIP Jameson

The Night Raids CIA-backed operations killed countless Afghan civilians, and the U.S. hasn't been held accountable. A reporter returns to investigate her past and unravel the legacy of the secretive Zero Units.

For many Afghans, terror came when night fell.

CIA-backed operations killed countless civilians.

The U.S. left without being held accountable.

A reporter returns to investigate her past and unravel the legacy of the secretive Zero Units.

Opinion | Columbia, Free Speech and the Coddling of the American Right If Columbia can’t protect free speech, what hope is there for America’s institutions?

"If our richest universities, cosseted by tenure and plumped with their ample endowments, cannot be citadels of free speech and forums for wrestling with the most difficult ideas, what hope is there for any other institution in our country?" www.nytimes.com/2024/04/19/o...

My book, Pious Labor, is now available open access via Jstor, though it won’t be published officially until Jan. If you’re eager to read before then, check it out! www.jstor.org/stable/jj.69...

For some bummer reasons, I couldn’t make it to the AAR, but I was sent this pic: my book lives! If you’re interested in the lives and imaginations of those living in the lands that would become Afghanistan (and the pursuit of divine language via Pashto!), check it out! www.fordhampress.com/aar-2023/

I cannot appear on a public platform, no, not even in Germany where I know views like mine are virtually banned, without adding my voice to the millions of people – Jewish, Muslim, Christian, Hindu, Communist, atheist, agnostic – that are marching on the streets all over the world, calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza. If we allow this brazen slaughter to continue, even as it is livestreamed into the most private recesses of our personal lives, we are complicit in it. Something in our moral selves will be altered forever. Are we going to simply stand by and watch while hospitals are bombed, a million people displaced and dead children in thousands pulled out from under the rubble? Are we going to once again watch a whole people being dehumanised to the point where their annihilation does not matter?

The solution cannot be a militaristic one. It can only be a political one in which both Israelis and Palestinians live together or side by side in dignity, with equal rights. The world must intervene. The occupation must end. Palestinians must have a viable homeland. If not, then the moral architecture of western liberalism will cease to exist. It was always hypocritical, we know. But even that provided some sort of shelter. That shelter is disappearing before our eyes.

parts of Arundhati Roy's speech at the Munich Literature Festival earlier this week.

"If we allow this brazen slaughter to continue, even as it is livestreamed into the most private recesses of our personal lives, we are complicit in it. Something in our moral selves will be altered forever."