Acknowledgements

These are the best parts of any piece of academic writing. Not only does the author of an otherwise often impersonal text get the chance to speak more or less directly to those who have supported and, in many cases, directly enabled the emergence of the piece of work but the reader also gets a chance to peek behind the armour of professional jargon and intellectual constructs. My favourite is the acknowledgement by a noted economist who, at the peak of his career in what would become his magnum opus, dedicated the book to his family ‘without whom this book would have been written long ago’. He referred to the fact that academic work today emerges in the middle of the muddle of an everyday life with working partners, ageing parents and growing children as the backdrop, rather than the silence of candle-lit seclusion. Adding to this the fact of a roaringly violent global context that has brought a fundamental sense of uncertainty to those otherwise living in privileged, and often wilful, ignorance of it.

The process of book writing spans years, sometimes decades. Let me begin by thanking those who have been part of the academic and intellectual groundwork. First, Elizabeth Shakman Hurd has been a source of inspiration long before my work on the book began and has continued to be so throughout the entire time. Not only has her own work kept its inspirational quality but her tireless support and engagement have been absolutely vital in turning this inspiration into independent scholarship. Jens Bartelson’s work has been central in developing many of the ideas in the book and a great part of the theoretical elaborations would have looked very different had I not had the fortune of previously engaging with his thinking. The fact that he then has been extremely generous with his time – without ever being formally obliged to – reading and commenting on previous drafts only adds to my indebtedness. Further, I want to thank Stefano Guzzini, whose comments one could collect under the German term druckreif – ready for printing. Not only is he one of the best readers I’ve ever encountered but his tireless and generous engagement with scholars of all generations has built a community that the rest of us continue to live off and within. In a profession and a time that is brutal and complacent, kindness and generosity remain radical. And there is hardly anyone kinder and more generous in the field than Stefano.

I also want to thank Christian Reus-Smit who endured my numerous years of academic coming-of-age with a mix of superhuman patience, intellectual generosity and academic rigour that any young researcher can only dream of. Without these qualities my attempts at finding the theoretical core of my interest and developing this into academic writing would have been, if not futile, at least a much more agonizing process. I also want to thank Olivier Roy, whose substantial input has been invaluable, and Nadia Marzouki, whose sharp intellect and kind nature remain the aspiration of many but the accomplishment of very few. By letting me be a part of – and leaving me experimenting within – their research project at the European University Institute (EUI) they allowed me access to a forum of intellectual exchange that is a true exception for any researcher.

I have had the luck to share my academic every day with a great group of people, all of whom have been a part of the conversation that provided the raw material from which the book emerged. I want to thank Helge Årsheim, Amélie Barras, Felix Berenskoetter, Julie Bernath, Roland Bleiker, Jacqui Cho, Faisal Devji, Arie Dubnov, Janis Grzybowski, Jaakko Heiskanen, Iza Hussin, Dana Landau, Daniel Levine, Ely Orrego Torres, Andrew Phillips, Gaya Raddadi, Erik Ringmar, Kristina Stoeckl, Erin Wilson, and Ayşe Zarakol for reading, commenting, and discussing various drafts at different stages of the writing process.

I also want to thank the International Relations research group at the EUI, the research community at Norwegian Institute of International Affairs (NUPI), the Department of Culture, Religion, Asian and Middle Eastern Studies (IKOS) at the University of Oslo, and Liliane Marti, Katharina Heyden, Martino Mona, and René Bloch at the University of Bern for providing a flourishing research climate and the one thing that researchers almost never get to experience: time. I want to thank Iza Hussin and Inanna Hamati-Ataya for hosting me during my time at the Department of Politics and International Studies (POLIS) and Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities (CRASSH) at Cambridge, and the research group at Global Epistemological Politics of Religion (GLOREL) for sustaining the conversation on global politics and religion throughout. I also want to thank Alexandra Grieser and Anne Koch, Christopher Daase, and in particular Günther Auth who taught me and the rest of his junior researchers the core importance of academic integrity. Elena Abbott deserves all the credit for her work in helping me piece together the project at the most critical point in time. I am also indebted to George Lawson, Carrie Parkinson, and John Haslam at Cambridge University Press for all the support and patience. Earlier versions of the arguments in Chapter 3 were previously published as ‘The Costs of Recognition: Global Politics, Religion, and the Colonial History of South Asia’. International Theory 15, no. 2 (2023): 323–50. Earlier versions of parts of Chapter 4 and 5 were published as ‘Entangled Empire: Religion and the Transnational History of Pakistan and Israel’. Millennium: Journal of International Studies 50, no. 2 (2022): 561–90.

Finally, anything that stands at the end of this writing process would not have been had I not been surrounded by the support of Julia Büchele, Helena Edling, Francine and Simone Gourguechon, Nadia Marzouki, Maria Fosheim-Lund, Bjørn-Vidar Solli, Daniel Mertens, Patrick Herron, Frank McNamara, Frank O’Connor, Charlotte Dichy, Nicola Andreossi, Antonia Krogius, Mehmet Aydin and Sultan Aksoy Aydin, Anneli and Emanuel Sjöblom, Carla Gysin, Gülşah Çapan, Electra May, Oliver Kessler, Ingeborg Klose Åkesson, Karin Kolber, Marc Krebs, Angelika Schori, Elad Lapidot, Leonidas Oikonomakis, Matthias Brenner, Méadhbh McIvor, Ole-Jacob Sending, Benjamin de Carvalho, Michel Thill, Martina Santschi, Minda Holm, Hans and Maj-Britt Sörling, Ann-Mari Birnbaum, Marianna Birnbaum, Henrik Birnbaum and many others.

Mona and Staffan Birnbaum have continued to give me everything humanly possible in support and love regardless of the fact that they seldom received any proper answer to the question what it, actually, is that I am writing about. My gratitude to Gabriel Vetter is beyond words. He has been the very foundation without which none of this would have been possible. Leo and Edith Birnbaum are the life that resists order. Sara Birnbaum remains the presence that resists time.

The book is dedicated to my family: Edith, Leo, Sara, Gabriel, Mona, and Staffan.