Columbia taps pro-Hamas, 'anarchist interdisciplinary activist-scholar' to teach intersectional history
On Jan. 16, Columbia University’s Middle East Institute in New York City welcomed Islamic scholar Mohamed Abdou as a visiting professor for the spring 2024 term.
In addition to praising Hamas, Abdou is a 'North African-Egyptian Muslim anarchist interdisciplinary activist-scholar of Indigenous, Black, critical race, and Islamic studies.'
A pro-Hamas individual has been hired to teach at an Ivy League institution on intersectionality this semester .
On Jan. 16, Columbia University’s Middle East Institute in New York City welcomed Islamic scholar Mohamed Abdou as a visiting professor for the spring 2024 term.
Abdou is currently teaching a class entitled “Decolonial Queerness and Abolition,” which among other topics, includes “transnational feminist discourses.”
“The course will explore kinship, intimacy, and friendship ties in a dynamic age where sexual and gender diversity is a hallmark of neoliberal ‘secular’ modernity, whose advent historically exposed all non-Europeans, to a plethora of false competing dualisms, such as secular/religious and heterogeneity/homogeneity, as well as discourses such as homonationalism (al-qawmiyyat al-mīthlīyat) and pinkwashing (al-ghaseel al-banafsajiy),” the class description states.
As noted by The Washington Free Beacon, Abdou praised Hamas and called for its tactics to be emulated during an interview in November.
“The warriors, the resistance fighters that were in Hamas, numbered less than 1,500 and look how they flipped the table—not only on an entire settler colonial state with no definable borders, but rather on the whole world,” Abdou said, referring to Hamas’ Oct. 7 deadly attacks against Israelis.
“You don’t need mass movements to change the world,” he continued. “You need a dedicated thousand, 1,500, a few thousand, that really are organized and know what it is that they’re doing, what they’re fighting for.”
According to his biography on Columbia’s Middle East Institute’s website, Abdou is a “North African-Egyptian Muslim anarchist interdisciplinary activist-scholar of Indigenous, Black, critical race, and Islamic studies.” He is also listed as a scholar of “gender, sexuality, abolition, and decolonization.”
He is serving as the Arcapita Visiting Assistant Professor of Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies (MESAAS) at the university for the spring.
In 2019, Abdou obtained his Ph.D. from Queen’s University, with his dissertation entitled, “Islam and Queer Muslims: Identity and Sexuality in the Contemporary World.” He also received his M.A. from Queen’s University in 2009 with a thesis called “Anarca-Islam: An Islamic Interpretation of Anarchism & an Anarchic Interpretation of Islam.”
According to his curriculum vitae, Abdou has teaching and research interests on: “Critical Race Theory; Transnational Feminisms; Indigenous, Black and Queer of Color Studies and Critiques; Abolition; Decolonization; Islamic and South West Asian and North African (SWANA) Studies; Social Movements.”
Abdou has also written two books, Islam and Anarchism: Relationships and Resonances and Queer Muslims: Racialized Sexuality, Religion & Politics in the Contemporary.
Dr. Abdou has published many articles for peer-reviewed journals as well, including “The Revolutionary Wonderings of Queer-Feminist Egyptian and Muslim Souls,” “Queer-Challenges to Queer Arab, Muslim, and People of Color Liberation,” and “The Body of the Condemned, Sally...Paths to Queering Anarca-Islam.”
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Abdou has previously advocated for “revolutionary alternatives” to capitalism and what he terms “settler colonialism.”
“DON’T just go to Pro-Palestinian rallies. DON’T just post on social media,” Abdou posted to X in November. “ORGANIZE revolutionary alternatives to capitalism & the state ON THE LAND you live alongside BIPOC kin who share similar anti-imperialist & anti-settler-colonial ETHICAL-POLITICAL commitments as YOU.”
DON’T just go to Pro-Palestinian rallies
DON’T just post on social media
ORGANIZE revolutionary alternatives to capitalism & the state ON THE LAND you live alongside BIPOC kin who share similar anti-imperialist & anti-settler-colonial ETHICAL-POLITICAL commitments as YOU— Dr. مُحَمَّد (@minuetinGmajor) November 28, 2023
Campus Reform has contacted Columbia University and Abdou for comment. This article will be updated accordingly.
