Notes on Contributors
Mutaz al-Khatib (معتز الخطيب) is Associate Professor of Methodology and Ethics at Hamad Bin Khalifa University, Doha, Qatar. He obtained a PhD in Ḥadīth Studies at Omdurman University, Sudan (2009). Al-Khatib was Visiting Fellow at ZMO in Berlin (2006), and Visiting Scholar at the Forum Transregionale Studien, Berlin (2012–2013). Previously, he was Visiting Lecturer at Qatar University and the American University of Beirut. Al-Khatib has given lectures at various universities such as the University of California-Berkeley, Princeton University, Cambridge University, Oxford University and the University of Tübingen. He authored and edited several books and over 30 academic articles. His books include Radd al-Ḥadīth min Jihat al-Matn: Dirāsa fī Manāhij al-Muḥaddithīn wa-l-Uṣūliyyīn (Matn Criticism: A Study of the Methods of Traditionists and Jurists, 2011), Maʾziq al-Dawla bayna al-Islāmiyyīn wa-l-ʿAlmāniyyīn (The Dilemma of the State between Islamists and Secularists, 2016), al-ʿUnf al-Mustabāḥ: al-Sharīʿa fī Muwājahat al-Umma wa-l-Dawla (Violence Made Permissible: ‘Sharia’ versus the People and the State, 2017), and Qabūl al-Ḥadīth (The Reception of Ḥadīth, 2017).
Mostafa Amakdouf (مصطفى أمقدوف) is Researcher at the Maarif Center for Academic Studies and Research in Casablanca, Morocco. He obtained a PhD on the “Renewal of Religious Thought in the Work of Taha Abderrahmane,” from the Department of Religious Studies, Moulay Ismail University, Meknes, Morocco (2017). Besides some articles on Taha Abderrahmane, his most recent book is entitled al-Akhlāqiyya Ufuqan lil-Taghyīr: Naḥwa Bināʾ Insāniyya Jadīda (Ethicality as a Horizon for Change: Towards Reshaping Humanity, 2018).
Mohamed Amine Brahimi obtained a PhD in Sociology at the School for Advanced Studies in Social Sciences (EHESS), Paris, France. He is currently Visiting Fellow at the Department of Sociology, Columbia University, New York, USA. His PhD thesis was on the question of reform in contemporary Islamic thought. He has published on topics related to the sociology of intellectuals, post-colonial theory and Islamic thought. His published work includes studies on Mohammed Arkoun (“Elective Affinity as an Intellectual Connection: A Review of Mohammed Arkoun’s Relation to the Institute of Ismaili Studies (IIS),” International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society, 2018), the French reception of Edward Said (“The Controversial Receptions of Edward Said: A Sociological Analysis of Scientific Citations,” Sociologica, 2017, with Clarisse Fordant) and Tariq Ramadan’s intellectual trajectory (“Strategies of a Transnational Intellectual: Tariq Ramadan and the Project of a European Islam,” Sociological Review, 2020, with Thomas Brisson).
Assia Chekireb (آسيا شكيرب) is Associate Professor of Comparative Religions at Emir Abdelkader University of Islamic Sciences in Costantine, Algeria. She leads two research units at the university on the religious-secular conflict in Israel, and on the religious movements and their political impact in Israel. Her books include al-Masyāniyya fī al-Fikr al-Dīnī al-Yahūdī wa-Atharuhā fī al-Masīḥiyya wa-l-Ḥarakāt al-Dīniyya al-Muʿāṣira (Messianism in Jewish Religious Thought and Its Influence on Christianity and Modern Religious Movements), Muqāraba Ītīmūlūjiyya li-Ḥurriyyat al-Muʿtaqad fī l-Masīḥiyya wa-l-Islām (An Etymological Approach to Freedom of Religion in Christianity and Islam), besides al-Usṭūra fī l-Nuṣūs al-Muqaddasa (Mythology in Sacred Texts, co-edited), and more than twenty articles and chapters on comparative theology and Islamic thought.
Abdelmounim Choqairi (عبد المنعم الشقيري) is Professor of Sociology at Dar El-Hadith El-Hassania Institute for Higher Islamic Studies, in Rabat. He obtained a PhD in Sociology at Mohamed V University in Rabat. He has taught courses on the anthropology of the Maghreb, the ethnographic heritage in Morocco, and the sociology of the Prophetic Sunna. His co-edited works include: al-Anthrubūlūjiyā: min al-Binyawiyya ilā al-Taʾwīliyya (Anthropology: From Structuralism to Interpretivism, 2014) and al-Dhākira wa-l-Hawiyya (Memory and Identity, 2013), besides various articles on the rationalization of religious practice.
Issam Eido (عصام عيدو) is Senior Lecturer of Arabic and Islamic Studies and the Director of Undergraduate Studies at the Department of Religious Studies, Vanderbilt University, Tennessee, USA. Eido was Visiting Scholar of Islamic and Arabic Studies at the Divinity School, University of Chicago, of Neubauer Collegium Fellow at The University of Chicago 2013–2015, and Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Forum Transregionale Studien with an affiliation to the Corpus Coranicum 2012–2013. He obtained his PhD in Ḥadīth Studies from Damascus University, Syria (2010). His research interests are in Qurʾan, ḥadīth, taṣawwuf and ethics. His publications include Manhaj Qubūl al-Akhbār ʿind al-Muḥaddithīn (Early Ḥadīth Scholars and their Criteria of Ḥadīth Criticism, 2018), Nashʾat ʿIlm al-Muṣṭalaḥ: wa-l-Ḥadd al-Fāṣil bayn al-Muqaddimīn wa-l-Mutaʾakhkhirīn (On the Origins of Ḥadīth Terminology: The Dividing Line between Early and Late Ḥadīth Scholars, 2016), “The Rise of Syrian Salafism: From Denial to Recognition,” “Taṭawwur ʿUlūm al-Ḥadīth fī al-ʿAṣr al-Saljūqī (The Development of the Sciences of Ḥadīth During the Seljuk Era)”, “The Sunnah” in The Encyclopedia of Islamic Bioethics.
Hicham El Makki (هشام المكي) is Professor of Communication, at the National School for Commerce and Management at Sidi Mohammed Ben Abdellah University, Fes, Morocco, and consultant for various Arab institutes and companies on values and communication. He obtained his PhD in Communication and Media Studies at Mohammed I University in Oujda. His publications include al-Ittiṣāl al-Jamāhīrī wa-Suʾāl al-Qiyam: Dirāsa fī Naẓariyyāt al-Ittiṣāl al-Jamāhīrī al-Muʾassisa (Mass Communication and the Question of Values: Studies in Founding Theories, 2016), al-Iʿlām al-Jadīd wa-Taḥaddiyāt al-Qiyam (The New Media and the Challenge of Values, 2014), besides various edited volumes, chapters and journal articles, all in Arabic.
Amin El-Yousfi is Researcher at the University of Cambridge, UK, where he completed a PhD in Sociology looking at how everyday Muslim pieties encounter and operate through policies of secular and neoliberal governmentality and bureaucratization. He is also Research Associate at the Department of Theology and Religious Studies, University of Chester. In addition, Amin is a member of the American Anthropological Association and the British Association of Islamic Studies (BRAIS).
Adil Et-Tahiri (عادل الطاهري) is currently PhD Fellow in History at the History and Society Laboratory in the West Basin of the Mediterranean, at Ibn Tofail University, Kenitra, Morocco. His publications on Islamic thought, written in Arabic, include: ʿUlūm al-Qurʾān fī al-Ibistīmiyya al-Muʿāṣira (Qurʾanic Sciences in Modern Epistemology, 2017), “al-Ẓāhira al-Qurʾāniyya: Min al-Mītāfīzīqā ilā al-Tārīkh” (The Qurʾanic Phenomenon: From Metaphysics to History, 2016), “al-Siyāsa fī Mashrūʿ al-Jābrī: Ḥatmiyyat al-Qaṭīʿa li-Wulūj Ufuq al-Ḥadātha” (Politics in the Project of al-Jabri: The Inevitable Rupture Due to the Breakthrough of Modernity, 2018), among others. His book al-Taʾwīl wa-l-Tārīkh (Interpretation and History) is under publication with Mominoun Without Borders in Rabat.
Ramon Harvey is Aziz Foundation Lecturer in Islamic Studies at Ebrahim College, London, UK. He earned his doctorate from SOAS, University of London. He is active in the fields of Qurʾanic studies, theology, and ethics, both as an intellectual historian and theologian. His first book, The Qurʾan and the Just Society (2018), was released by Edinburgh University Press and he is working on a new book with the same publisher on constructive Muslim theology, drawing from the Māturīdī tradition and contemporary philosophy. He is the editor of the series Edinburgh Studies in Islamic Scripture and Theology.
Mohammed Hashas (محمد حصحاص) is Senior Research Fellow at La Pira Center for Islamic History and Doctrines in Palermo, connected to the FSCIRE Foundation for Religious Studies “Giovanni XXIII” in Bologna, Italy. He is also Faculty Member at the Department of Political Science, Luiss Guido Carli University in Rome, from which he obtained his PhD in Political Theory (2013). Between 2011 and 2017, he held Visiting Research Fellowships in Tilburg, Copenhagen, and Oxford Universities, and Leibniz-ZMO in Berlin. Hashas has authored The Idea of European Islam (2019), Intercultural Geopoetics: An Introduction to Kenneth White’s Open World (2017), and has co-edited Islam, State and Modernity: Mohamed Abed al-Jabri and the Future of the Arab World (2018), and Imams in Western Europe (2018), besides various journal articles, book chapters, and free essays. He is currently editing, among other things, Pluralism in Islamic Contexts (forthcoming).
Eva Kepplinger has been Research Fellow and lecturer at the Department of Islamic-Religious Studies, Friedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen-Nuremberg, Germany, since 2017. There she teaches Islamic ethics and Islamic jurisprudence. She finished her PhD in 2017 at Vienna University with the title The Impact of ash-Shaṭibī’s Maqāṣid-Thinking on the Malikite School of Law. From 2011 till 2017 she was a Lecturer at the Muslim Teacher Training College (Vienna), where she taught several courses in the field of Islamic studies and Islamic education. Her research interests are: Islamic intellectual history, Islamic legal thought and philosophy, ethics and reform movements in the modern era.
Mohamed Ourya (محمد أوريا) PhD, is Assistant Professor in the Department of International Affairs, College of Arts and Science, Qatar University, Doha, Qatar, member of the Observatory of the Middle East and North Africa of the Raoul Dandurand Chair at UQAM, and member of GEPANC (Groupe d’ Etudes Politiques pour l’ Afrique du Nord contemporaine). His most recent publications include Tradition and Modernity in Contemporary Arab Thought (2016), The Religious in the Citadels of Politics (2014), Conspiracy in the Arab-Muslim Imaginary (2012), and the following chapters: “The Illiteracy of Muhammad” in Muhammad in History, Thought, and Culture: An Encyclopedia of the Prophet of God (2014), “Mohamed Abed al-Jabri” in Dictionary of Literary Biography, the volume on the 20th Century Arab writers of fiction & philosophy (2008), “Justice in the Current Islamist Discourse: Rawlsian Analysis of the Difficulties to Found a Fair Society in the Arab-Muslim Space” (2016), “Freedom in Arab thought and practice. Rawlsian perspective of social justice as equity” (2018), “The disinterested Arab intellectual: The Cases of George Tarabishi and Taha Abderrahmane” (2019).
Harald Viersen is Lecturer in Islamic Studies at the Radboud University, Nijmegen, the Netherlands. His academic background covers training in philosophy, law, Arabic and Middle Eastern studies at the universities of Amsterdam, Cambridge, and Marburg. While he specializes in contemporary Arab thought, his academic interests cover the history and modern development of the Arab-Islamic cultural and intellectual tradition generally. In addition, he has engaged with current debates about the conceptualization of Islam from a philosophical perspective. Recent publications include articles on Mohammed Abed al-Jabri’s ethical writings and on the work of Talal Asad and Ludwig Wittgenstein in relation to the question of how to conceptualize Islam. He has also contributed various articles to the journal Zemzem (in Dutch), as well as to Muftah magazine in his capacity as a contributing editor.