Zehra Mehdi
Zehra Mehdi is a PhD candidate at the Department of Religion at Columbia University and holds an M.Phil in Psychoanalysis with two Masters degrees in South Asian Religions and Clinical Psychology. Her dissertation, The Work of Religion: Violence, Trauma and Refusal in the Lives of Muslims in Hindu India, is the first ethnography of Muslim persecution that delineates the psychological imprints of Hindu nationalism on a stigmatized minority, explaining how religion becomes the psychic repository through which persecution is articulated, worked through, and refused. In the face of extreme state violence rendered banal, the ‘work of religion,’ is the process by which Muslims meaningfully use religion to make sense of their victimization and transform their personal suffering into collective resistance against their oppression. Offering a necessary bridge between political assertion and pious practice, The Work of Religion shifts the focus from the liberatory potential of Indian secularism to the praxis of religion, highlighting the variegated ways pious Muslims manage their traumatic tribulations under prolonged political duress. Dr. Mehdi is also a practicing psychoanalytic psychotherapist, gives public talks on political trauma and social suffering, and writes on secular imaginaries of Muslim women.
Upcoming Projects:
“Theological Grammars of Grief “(Journal Article)
Second Book Project: On the Political Theology of Lynching in India (forthcoming).
