Request for Essays
Kasurian commissions essays by directly approaching writers. In addition to commissioning work, we consider unsolicited pitches on a rolling basis. To encourage and invite fresh perspectives on topics central to our mission, this page hosts our Request for Essays (RFEs), outlining the themes we are particularly interested in exploring. We update the RFEs regularly, so check back often.
If you think that you are the right person to tackle any of these issues and want to write for Kasurian, please visit the Writer’s Guide for further instructions. We highly recommend reading essays from our spring issue to understand the themes, style, and quality of writing we expect from submissions.
Artificial Intelligence
We are seeking essays that explore the epistemological, ethical and civilisational implications of artificial intelligence. During the Abbasid era, the mass translation of Greek texts led to a period of extraordinary scholarly and scientific output. Today, AI, especially in areas such as translation, has the potential to play a similarly transformative role. With the vast majority of Islamic manuscripts untranslated, and many unpublished, AI could radically accelerate access to centuries of thought in theology, law, science and philosophy — across time and space.
Could we use AI to create efficient processes to publish and translate manuscripts? What does AI mean for the future of Islamic learning, authority, and knowledge transmission? How might it reshape traditional educational institutions or challenge existing hierarchies of expertise? And what ethical frameworks, grounded in Islamic philosophy or beyond, might help us navigate this rapidly evolving terrain?
Art and Culture
We are seeking essays that explore the creative imprint of Islamic civilisation, across time, media and geography, and ask what possibilities lie ahead for a modern Islamic aesthetic. Fashion, architecture, and art inspired civilisations beyond Islam. From classical music in Russia to jazz in America, Muslims have played a prominent and understudied role in the development of art and music in different cultures.
We are interested in case studies of artists, movements, and mediums, both past and present, that illuminate how Muslims have expressed and reflected beauty, power and spirituality through art. Through these case studies, we can look at ourselves and ask: What has been the historical impact of Muslim creatives on the arts, and what is the present state of affairs? What are the possibilities of a modern Islamic art? What does living, contemporary Islamic art offer the world?
Social Movements
We are seeking essays that explore how grassroots social, religious and political movements shaped Islamic civilisation, sometimes more profoundly than state actors or elite institutions. From modern movements like the Russian Jadid and the Indonesian Muhammadiyah, to Sufi orders like the Libyan Sanussiya and Turkish Nursis, to political movements like the Indian Khilafat Movement, social and political movements have had a great impact on Islamic civilisation leading up to the present day.
We want to publish essays that tell the stories of these movements: How they emerged, who participated, what they aimed to achieve, and what legacies they have left behind. Essays may focus on a specific movement or explore broader patterns across time and geography.
Urbanism
We are seeking essays that explore the past, present, and future of urban life in and beyond the Muslim world. Islamic civilisation historically produced some of the world’s most advanced cities, known for their integration of spiritual, social and material life. Today, however, many Muslim cities are renowned for the opposite: concrete jungles, uncontrolled sprawls, congestion, and a lack of coherent planning.
We are interested in on-the-ground, evidence-backed stories looking at how rural-to-urban migration in the 20th century occurred, and how it may have collided with weak regulatory environments that resulted in infrastructural crises and diminished quality of life. We are also interested in seeing how industrial urbanism can be reimagined with “Islamic principles,” not merely by replicating the compact old quarters of Damascus, Fez, and Timbuktu, but looking into the future on governing models for modern cities with modern amenities, while taking into account the fundamental spiritual, psychological, and material needs of a healthy society. The inquiry need not be limited to the Islamic world. What can be learned from successful urban experiments elsewhere? What policies, planning models or economic frameworks have yielded liveable cities, and how might these insights inform a reimagined Islamic urbanism?
The Indian Ocean, Past and Present
We are seeking essays that explore Islam’s civilisational presence in the Indian Ocean, both its past vitality and its renewed strategic relevance today. Much of Islamic history overemphasises the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), in particular the rise and decline of Arab civilisation in that region. However, where Arab Islamic civilisation indeed declined in grandeur in MENA, to be superseded by non-Arab powers and cultures, Arab and Islamic civilisation continued to flourish in the Indian Ocean, expanding from the Swahili coast to Nusantara. Muslim traders travelled, proselytised, traded, and set up families and kingdoms across the width of the Indian Ocean.
The Indian Ocean economy was historically the largest and most important arena for trade in the world, until the Atlantic replaced it in the 18th century. Today, we are seeing a historical reversion to the Indo-Pacific. We are interested in essays that connect historical patterns of mobility, exchange and cultural synthesis to present-day realities. From port cities and diaspora communities to religious life, maritime economies and regional diplomacy, we hope, through these essays, to offer a more expansive view of Islamic civilisation that is both rooted in history and attuned to the global shifts of the present. Writers may approach the topic through culture, trade, migration, economics, politics and geopolitics.
Islam in China
We are seeking essays that explore the deep, complex and often overlooked history of Islamic in China, from its earliest arrival to its entanglement with modern politics. Muslims have played a prominent role in Chinese history since first contact in the 8th century, from the 15th century Ming dynasty admiral Zheng He, to the Ma Clique of Hui Muslim generals that all but ruled China in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Yet Islam in China, one of the world's oldest and pre-eminent civilisations, remains poorly understood.
We are interested in essays that recover the stories of Muslim individuals and movements, merchants and communities, and generals and armies, across Chinese history to the modern day, exploring how Islam successfully navigated imperial politics and cultural fusion to become a small but crucial element of the wider Chinese civilisational fabric.
Islam’s Persian Revival
We are seeking an essay, or a series of essays, that examines how the Samanids reconciled Islam and Persian culture, and how this legacy shaped the broader “Balkans-to-Bengal” civilisational complex in later centuries.
The Samanid dynasty, a Sunni Muslim Persian dynasty in central Asia, spearheaded a cultural revival that laid the foundations for a renewed Persian identity in the Islamic world. With figures such as Ferdowsi and Avicenna, and the revival of the Persian language that would eventually become the lingua franca of Islamic civilisation, Samanid patronage created a strong Persian state embedded in the wider framework of Islamic civilisation. By revisiting this pivotal moment, we hope to gain a deeper insight into how Islamic civilisation has historically absorbed and elevated diverse cultural traditions.
The Rise and Fall of Nasserism
We are seeking an essay, or series of essays, that critically examines the rise of Nasserist ideology in the Mid-20th century, its promises of Arab unity, anti-imperialism and social justice, and how its legacy continues to shape the political and institutional landscape of the Arab world today.
Beginning in the 1950s, a wave of military coups in the Arab world brought authoritarian regimes to power in Libya, Egypt, Syria and Iraq. These regimes were often led by officers inspired by Gamal Abdel Nasser, who blended nationalism, socialism, and republicanism loosely called ‘Nasserism’. We are interested in an essay that explores the promises and pitfalls of Nasserist ideology, and how, materially, its ideological and structural legacy continues to shape the Arab world today.
Din-ü Devlet: An Ottoman Theory of State
We are seeking essays that explore the evolving structures of governance in the Ottoman Empire, with a particular focus on Din-ü Devlet, the intertwining of religion and state. In the 16th-17th centuries, the Ottoman Empire underwent a quiet transformation from a highly active, executive Sultan style of leadership to an increasingly administrative-bureaucratic form of governance. This shift was underpinned by Din-ü Devlet an emerging theory of state that sought to harmonise political authority with religious legitimacy. Over six centuries, the Ottomans experimented with multiple governance styles, sometimes dynamic and expansionist, other times rigid and stagnant.
We are interested in essays that examine the cycles of governance styles and methodologies that the Ottoman Empire went through over its six-century period of existence. These essays could form an important but misunderstood piece of the puzzle regarding early modern Islamic history, with its dynamism and stagnation and everything else in between. What drove the governance shifts? How did the Ottoman state think about and apply sovereignty, legitimacy and law across different eras? What can this specific history tell us about statecraft in early modern Islamic contexts?
Pakistan’s Nuclear Program
We are seeking essays that explore the development of Pakistan’s nuclear program—not just as a technological achievement, but as a window into the country’s political structure, military dominance, and civilisational anxieties.
The Rise of Salafism
We are seeking essays that trace the historical trajectory of Salafism, with a specific focus on its emergence as a reformist impulse and its paradoxical relationship to modernity. While Salafism is viewed as a puritanical, ultraconservative, reactionary movement, its origins tell a more complicated story. The earliest Salafis were deeply engaged with the intellectual and political challenges of modernity, and embraced rationalism and science while advocating for a return to the Quran and Sunnah as the ultimate sources of renewal. The blend of scriptural fundamentalism and modernist ambition made Salafism uniquely adaptive.
We are interested in essays that explore the origins of Salafism as a modernist movement: What made early Salafism so modern? What were the material and institutional conditions that enabled its emergence? How did it spread and evolve, and what relevance do these movements have for us today?
The Future of the Madrasa
We are seeking essays that explore the role, evolution and future of the madrasa. For centuries, the madrasa was the heart of Islamic intellectual life. Today, it is at an ineffectual crossroads, either outdated and disconnected from contemporary challenges, or increasingly shaped by political agendas, or reactive posturing against secular education. Yet, the madrasa remains an important institution.
We are interested in essays that engage critically and imaginatively with this institution: How have funding models evolved? What impact has rural-urban migration, or digitalisation, had on the madrasa? What structural constraints limit reform? We also welcome essays that imagine what the madrasa should be. Can it engage science, technology and global philosophy? What models, historical or contemporary, offer a path forward. What are the institutional, or pedagogical reforms worth considering?
Empirical Case Studies
In line with Kasurian’s mission, we are always seeking essays that move beyond ideology to examine the material and structural foundations of both Islamic history, and modern life. In other words, we are seeking case studies that look at the economics, institutional, demographic, political, social and even ecological constraints and opportunities.
Islamic civilisation is often reduced to a set of competing ideas and ideologies. We want to take a closer look at the material factors underlying any given period of history and how those factors interplay with political events, economic systems, and social realities. From taxation systems to waqf economics to various modes of production, what we understand about the motivations and causes of events in Islamic history is deeply rooted in their material realities.
For example, much of the debate around the stagnation of the Ottoman Empire in the 19th century emphasises ideological or cultural issues. It may be more useful to look at how much arable land the Ottoman Empire possessed, how large was its population and how taxable were they, what happened to nascent attempts at industrial production, and if and how Ottoman elites or influential sectors of society were opposed to radical reforms in the Ottoman political economy owing to entrenched feudal interests.
We welcome focused case studies from any period or region that ground major historical questions in material and structural analysis. In understanding the material conditions underpinning how Islamic history actually played out, we can reveal more than abstract theorising could. Through case studies, we hope to arrive at a clarity that helps us take the material seriously as a driver of civilisational change.