A humbling experience : Launching 'The New Spirit of Islamism' at Oxford

Then came the Q&A, which stretched into a lively 45 minutes, with questions spanning the fractures within Ennahda and the Muslim Brotherhood, to speculating on the AKP in a post-Erdoğan era.

Hello, hello. Exciting updates from my end! Last Tuesday, 15 October, I had the privilege of kicking off the academic year’s seminar series with a joint event for the European Studies Centre and the Middle East Centre at St Antony’s College, University of Oxford.

This was especially meaningful for me for three reasons: these two centres have been academic havens for me at different stages of my life, shaping my intellectual path – and the chair of the talk, Prof. Michael Willis, was my PhD supervisor.

And secondly, the fact that I was standing in that room—where I once listened to world-renowned thinkers—was to introduce my new book, The New Spirit of Islamism. This book is the culmination of my work as a doctoral student at Oxford, and it felt humbling to present it in that space.

I had some concerns, though. Since it’s an academic book, I was worried it might be a tad bit drab for …