The Global Studies department hosted Professor Tanzeen Doha last Friday to present ethnographic research concerning Islamic tradition and global political violence. The talk, titled “Encountering Irreparable: Global War, Global Islam,” focused on two distinct historical events: the 2013 Shapla massacre in Dhaka, Bangladesh, and the Rohingya migration waves of 2016 and 2017. Doha, an ethnographer and literary scholar, challenged the audience to reconsider how religious subjects navigate conditions of total devastation.
Professor Maple Raza introduced Doha, noting that his work examines the encounter between Islamic migrants and the helpers who assisted them at the border between Myanmar and Bangladesh. Doha began by discussing the 2013 protest in Dhaka, where state security forces killed numerous Islamic practitioners during a peaceful demonstration. He noted that most victims were students from Kaomi Madrasas, independent seminaries that often face secular suspicion under the logic of the global war on terror.
A central theme of Doha’s lecture was the concept of the encounter. He explained that the Bangladeshi security regime used the term “encounter and crossfire” to label extrajudicial killings of Muslims, misrepresenting reality to justify violence. In contrast, Doha defined his own ethnographic encounter as a process of internal transformation and the deconstruction of the divide between the researcher and the subject. He argued that this engagement reveals a loss that is “irreparable,” where no possibility of repair or return exists.
The second project Doha shared involved the Rohingya migration. He observed that during the 2016 and 2017 waves, voluntary Islamic groups in the Chittagong region organized relief efforts independently of international humanitarian agencies. Doha stated these activities fall outside the logic of liberal humanitarianism. Instead, these practitioners view the Rohingya as part of a “contemporary history of the present” that re-historicizes prophetic stories of migration.
Doha also discussed tearfulness as a “phenomenological dimension of living under a necropolitical regime.” He cited the Quran and Hadith literature, which frame tears as gifts from God and signs of closeness to the Most High. For Islamic practitioners confronting the irreparable, Doha argued that tearfulness serves as an ethical, political, and psycho-spiritual disposition that disrupts traditional arcs of discourse.
The talk concluded with a discussion of the scholarly debate between Talal Asad and Saba Mahmood. Doha situated his research as a “third position” regarding how embodied traditions survive global crises. While Asad remains pessimistic about the survival of these traditions in a global system, Doha’s interlocutors demonstrate how Islamic discursive traditions provide the necessary tools to navigate catastrophe.
Following the lecture, questions were raised about the broader implications of his findings. Professor Britt Halvorson asked Doha to discuss how concepts like tearfulness and brokenness affect the capacity for agency and form social possibilities within Islamic tradition. Doha responded that though he focuses on the “death world” created by security regimes, his subjects find agency through their commitment to traditional practices even in fragments.
Professor Nadia El-Shaarawi asked why centering emotion and felt experience is important for his ethnographic approach, especially when dealing with subjects of violence. Doha explained emotionality serves as an exterior interaction rather than a purely interior state. He argued that tapping into felt experiences captures the “excess” of human experience that language often fails to convey.
~ Stephen Owusu Badu `27
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