2024 GRANT RECIPIENTS
This year's grants have been awarded under "Islam in the contemporary world". We are honored to have been able to award research grants to such an accomplished and diverse group of scholars and researchers. To learn more about "Islam on the Edges" and "Islamic Education" please click here.
Ridwan Balogun
|
Ridwan Balogun is a second-year Ph.D. student in the Religion Department at Florida State University. He earned his BA and MA in Islamic Studies from the Department of Religions and Peace Studies at Lagos State University, Ojo, Nigeria. His research interests center on the history and ethnography of Muslim networks in Nigeria, Nigerian diaspora, and the Caribbean. He explores how Muslims adapt their Islamic worldview to Nigeria's contemporary religious and cultural pluralism climate. Currently, he is conducting ethnographic research on Yoruba Salafis, a conservative Muslim minority group, and their efforts to transform their thoughts and practices, originally from Saudi Arabia, into a uniquely Nigerian Islamic tradition on par with Islamic currents in Nigeria.
“Reformists Reformed: Salafi Pious Performance in the Nigerian Public Sphere” This project shifts from textual approach by paying greater attention to how Salafis perform their public identities in southwestern Nigeria in relation to religiously plural audiences in a democratic republic. This project focuses on how religious minority Salafi Muslims in Lagos State perform piety (cf. Mahmood 2005) in ways intended to capture the attention of diverse Muslim and non-Muslim communities. It proposes that Salafis perform their public presentations of self in response to the expectations of those they perceive as their constituents in ways that shape, as much as follow from, their interpretations of Islamic texts. In Lagos State, Salafis distinguish themselves from each other, and from both non-Salafis and non-Muslims, by adopting one of two strategies: (1) demarcation, or (2) accommodation. As members of a religious minority in southern Nigeria, each figure reaps the dividends of religious pluralism, pursuing Salafism in alternative ways. |
Patrick D’Silva
|
Patrick J. D'Silva specializes in the study of Muslim engagement with yoga with an emphasis on the Persianate world. He completed his B.A. in religious studies and classics at Macalester College, his M.A. in Theological Studies at Harvard Divinity School, and his Ph.D. in Religious Studies at UNC Chapel Hill. He is currently researching the rise of yoga in the West, as well as the interplay of race, religion, and cultural appropriation in science fiction. He is a Visiting Teaching Assistant Professor of Islamic Studies at the University of Denver. He lives in Boulder, Colorado, with his family.
Islam, Race, and Cultural Appropriation in Contemporary Science Fiction Dr. D’Silva is writing a book on the intersection of religion with race, racism, and cultural appropriation in mainstream Western science fiction and fantasy literature and film. There are many examples where this would tie into Islam (with the Star Wars and Dune franchises being key examples). However, this project is not just about appropriations of, or problematic depictions of, Islam and Muslim communities. An equally important aspect of the book is highlighting speculative fiction traditions from written by and for Muslims, whether from the Middle East or South Asia, or more recently, authored by Muslims based in the West. These examples include Rokeya Hossein's Sultana's Dream (1905), G. Willow Wilson's Alif: The Unseen (2012), Ahmed Saadawi's Frankenstein in Baghdad (2013), Amir Tag Ezsir's Telepathy (2015), and Shannon Chakraborty's City of Brass (2018) and The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi (2023). |
Jordan Duffner
|
Jordan Denari Duffner, PhD, is a scholar of Muslim-Christian relations, interreligious dialogue, and Islamophobia. She earned her doctoral and master's degrees in theology and religious studies, and her bachelor's in international affairs, from Georgetown University. Her books are Finding Jesus among Muslims and Islamophobia. She is a member of the National Catholic-Muslim Dialogue and of the Catholic Advisory Council for Churches for Middle East Peace. She is the former recipient of a Fulbright research grant in Amman, Jordan, and is an associate of the Bridge Initiative. She lives outside, Washington D.C. with her family.
Book Project: Pope Francis and Islam: His Legacy and Lessons for Catholic-Muslim Dialogue Dialogue with Muslims has been a priority of Pope Francis' pontificate. During his decade-plus as pope, Francis has made numerous visits to Muslim-majority countries, forged bonds with leaders and ordinary believers, and repeatedly drawn attention to the presence of God in the experiences of Muslims and in their faith tradition. He has also stood up against anti-Muslim bigotry, and encouraged joint activism by the world's two largest religious. This book will chart the trajectory of his approach to Islam, delving into his personal friendships with Muslims, his underlying theology of interreligious dialogue, and how his approach has been received by Catholics and Muslims around the world. This CICW grant will support writing and research during the summer/fall of 2024, when Duffner will conduct several interviews and write the introduction and two substantive chapters. Ultimately, she anticipates a book that spans both popular and academic audiences. |
Emad Hamdeh
|
Emad Hamdeh is an Associate Professor of Arabic studies at Embry Riddle University. His research delves into Islamic law, intellectual history, and reform movements, with over a dozen articles published in peer-reviewed journals. Hamdeh also published several important books, including Salafism and Traditionalism: Scholarly Authority in Modern Islam (Cambridge University Press, 2021). He currently serves as the Editor of the Oxford Handbook on Islamic Reform. Hamdeh's forthcoming book in Oneworld's Makers of the Muslim World series, titled Global Mufti: Yusuf al-Qaradawi, provides an insightful study on the life and thought of the renowned scholar, making an important contribution to the field of Islamic studies.
Orthodoxy on the Edge: Yusuf al-Qaradawi's Education Initiatives for Muslim Minorities Preserving religious identity while residing in non-Muslim majority countries poses challenges for Muslim minorities in the modern world. Emad Hamdeh's forthcoming book "Global Mufti: Yusuf al-Qaradawi" explores how the influential 21st-century scholar revolutionized Islamic law to address this very issue. The book examines Qaradawi's innovative legal framework, which employs ijtihad to enable Muslim minorities to integrate into their contemporary societies while maintaining their faith. It contrasts Qaradawi's nuanced methodologies for navigating the complexities of modernity through an Islamic lens with rigid, literalist approaches. His adaptability in applying religious jurisprudence to modern, contemporary issues has significantly influenced how Muslim minorities practice Islam globally. The book delves into Qaradawi's background, influences, legal methodology, and his profound impact on the lived experiences of Muslims worldwide in the face of modernity. By revolutionizing Islamic law, Qaradawi provided guidance for Muslim minorities to uphold their religious identity while residing as minorities. |
Nomaan Hasan
|
Nomaan Hasan is a PhD Candidate in the Department of Anthropology at Brown University. His dissertation, titled ‘Experiments in Collective Selfhood on the Last Days of Democracy,’ examines how minoritized groups imagine and articulate their political identity under conditions of democratic disrepair. Fieldwork for the project was conducted in northern India with the support of the National Science Foundation, Wenner-Gren Foundation, Society for the Scientific Study of Religion, and several intramural grants. This research has appeared or is forthcoming in Anthropology and Humanism and the Political and Legal Anthropology Review.
Secularism and the Islamic Tradition in Contemporary India ‘Generalizing Religion: Islam beyond Muslims’ examines how dissident activists in majoritarian India seek to reclaim a place for Islam in public life. Through participant observation at the strategy planning meetings of civil society organizations, the project follows how they seek to establish Islam as a common resource across religious boundaries. To that end, two audiences to which this work is differently addressed are identified: the internal Muslim community and the broader multireligious public. As an instance of the former, the research looks at discussions over reforming the sermons delivered by preachers to incorporate more practical lessons that carry a wider appeal; as representative of the latter, the research focuses on attempts at cross-religious comparison undertaken in heavily attended public symposia. Ultimately, the project aims to explore the urgent question of what role Islam can have for non-Muslims. |
Michael Kaplan
|
Michael Kaplan is a PhD candidate in Sociocultural Anthropology at George Washington University in Washington DC. His doctoral research takes the "umma" (global Muslim community) as its ethnographic subject and investigates how Muslims of diverse backgrounds and positionalities relate to one another and to the idea of this collective, transnational belonging. Prior to entering his PhD, he completed a master's degree in Islamic and Near Eastern Studies at Washington University in St. Louis and a bachelor's degree in History at the New School in New York City.
Cultivating the Umma: Muslim Migration, Transnational Belongings, and Everyday Aspirations in Istanbul In recent years, Istanbul has emerged as the site of multiple, overlapping migrations, from refugees fleeing war in neighboring countries to English-speaking Muslims from Europe and the Americas wanting to live in a Muslim-majority country. This project, tentatively titled "Cultivating the Umma: Muslim Migrations, Transnational Belongings, and Everyday Aspirations in Istanbul," traces the renewed significance of Istanbul as a central nodal site within a broader moral geography and explores the intersections of these migrations. Using ethnographic methods, the project seeks to understand how Muslims of diverse backgrounds and positionings relate to one another, to the cityscape, and to a broader, aspirational idea of collective Muslim belonging. Ultimately, it examines how transnational Muslims relate to one another amid differences and explores the forms of aspiration possible when these aspirations are already, in ways, structured through and around the nation-state. |
Ehsan Kashfi
|
Ehsan Kashfi is a PhD candidate and instructor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Alberta. His research interests include identity politics, collective memory, migration and integration. He earned a master’s degree in international relations of the Middle East from Durham University and a second master’s degree in political science from the University of South Florida. He currently works on discursive and commemorative constructions of national identity in post-revolutionary Iran. His recent publications include “The Politics of Street Names: Reconstructing Iran’s Collective Identity”.
Islamophobia Within: Exploring the Rise and Impact of Islamophobia in the Iranian Diaspora of North America This research examines the rising trend of Islamophobia within the Iranian diaspora in North America, particularly its extent, nature, and the factors contributing to its increase and its impact on cultural and religious identity. The study will explore how Islamophobia is experienced and expressed within this community, highlighting the influence of cultural, historical, and political backgrounds, particularly the experiences related to living under an authoritarian theocracy in Iran. It will also assess the influence of Islamophobia on the internal dynamics and identity formation among Iranian diaspora members, focusing on the relationships between Muslim and non-believer Iranians as well as across different generations. |
Sahar Khawaja
|
Sahar Khawaja is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Denver in the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies. She also serves as a research assistant at the Center for Islam in the Contemporary World at Shenandoah University. Her research interests include the experiences of students in Islamic schools, the diverse challenges faced by minoritized students, and the specific experiences of Muslim students in U.S. schools. Dedicated to fostering inclusive educational environments, her dissertation seeks to inform educational policies to better accommodate Muslim students in U.S. schools and bridge the gap between American educators and Muslim students.
Bridging the Gap Between American Educators and Muslim Students Entering the third decade of the 21st century, the political landscape in the United States presents a challenging environment for Muslims, mirroring the global trend of oppression and discrimination faced by this community. Despite being the fastest-growing demographic in the nation, Muslim Americans increasingly encounter discrimination. Employing an instrumental case study design, this research seeks to unravel the educational journey of Muslim young adults attending schools in a Rocky Mountain region state of the US. This study also aims to uncover potential cultural and religious barriers they face and offer practical recommendations to educational practitioners for fostering a more inclusive environment. This study addresses a significant gap in the literature by bridging the culture/knowledge gap between American educators and Muslim students. The frameworks of Ahmed (2022) and MusCrit (Ali, 2022) offer a promising approach in the exploration of the intricacies of marginalization within this context. |
Mariam Kotachi
|
Mariam Kotachi is an Adjunct Assistant Professor at the School of Business at Shenandoah University. She holds a Ph.D. and M.S. in Engineering Management from Old Dominion University and a B.S. in Biology from the University of Texas Arlington. Her interests involve among others: optimization techniques, statistics and data analysis, and engineering management. Her efforts also include international collaborations and multi-institutional research projects.
Integrating Islamic Business Models in Ethical and Sustainable Markets This multi-institutional international research project focuses on integrating business principles with ethical and sustainable practices, offering detailed guidance on Halal and Tayyib concepts. The work will include the curation and assembly of practical insights and case studies in the form of original works of authorship from various scholars. Furthermore, it will target a wide audience and provide a robust framework for entrepreneurs. It is anticipated that the manuscript produced will be a substantial resource for those aiming to establish businesses that are not only Halal-compliant but are also fundamentally ethical and sustainable. |
Nermeen Mouftah
|
Nermeen Mouftah is an assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Illinois Chicago. Her research explores major social interventions variously articulated as development, humanitarianism, and care. She ethnographically depicts the ethical and political lives of such projects, attending to the sometimes contradictory effects of their mobilizations. Her research asks, how does centering Muslim-led development and humanitarianism call into question universal and normative paradigms of improvement and rescue? Her first book, Read in the Name of Your Lord: Islamic Literacy Development in Revolutionary Egypt is forthcoming with the Indiana University Press series, Public Cultures of the Middle East and North Africa.
Kafāla as Critique, Kafāla as Care: Contentions Over Morocco’s Relinquished Children This ongoing research investigates how Muslims grapple with enacting an ethics of orphan care, crucially embedding our understanding of legal power and hermeneutics within a contextualized appreciation for ideas about and practices of relatedness and social welfare. While the care of the orphan is a laudable form of giving within Muslim societies, precisely what care should look like is contested. This is primarily due to two major factors: a consensus among Islamic legal schools that adoption (tabannī) is prohibited (harām), and the stigmatization of children born outside of marriage. Chief among the legal concepts deployed to regulate orphan care is kafāla, a form of guardianship. Two articles are in the works that examine the articulation of kafāla in contemporary Morocco, specifically as the concept has been negotiated in ways that unsettle the Convention on the Rights of the Child’s principle of the best interests of the child. The Moroccan case is particularly illuminating, given the high rate of child relinquishment that makes the country a destination for intercountry adoptions, and defines Moroccan leadership on the global stage in articulating kafāla as an Islamic concept distinct from Euro-American adoption. |
Terje Ostebo
|
Terje Ostebo is the chair of the Department of Religion and a professor at the Center for African Studies and the Department of Religion, University of Florida. He is also the founding director of the Center for Global Islamic Studies at UF. His research interests are Islam, ethnicity, and politics in Ethiopia, contemporary Islam and Islamic reform in the Horn of Africa. He is the author of Islam, Ethnicity, and Conflict in Ethiopia: The Bale Insurgency, 1963-1970 (Cambridge 2020); and the co-editor of Muslim Ethiopia (co-editor, 2013); Localising Salafism: Religious Change among Oromo Muslims in Bale, Ethiopia (Brill 2012).
Processes of Religionizing and De-religionizing: The Case of Oda Roba, Ethiopia This research project aims to investigate how Muslims in Ethiopia negotiate their religious and ethnic identities in a context dominated by Islamic reformism and where efforts are made to restore pre-Islamic and indigenous sites, objects, and practices. The case in point for the study is the attempt to restore Oda Roba as pre-Islamic a ritual site. The restoration project has led to intense debates about whether Muslims should engage with it or not, and the study looks at how different Muslim actors are engaged in processes and activities that contribute, support, or contest the attempts of restoration. Exploring two interrelated processes which are called religionization and de-religionization, the aim is to unpack the different strategies local Muslims have been using to legitimize and delegitimize the site and to encourage and discourage participation in the rituals. Similarly important is to explore how these processes may contribute to new conceptualizations of “religion” and “culture.” |
Samuel Ross
|
Samuel Ross is an Assistant Professor of Religion at Texas Christian University in the United States. His research focuses on the history of Muslim Qur'an interpretation, the Muslim reception of the Bible, theories of secularization, and Islam in America. His book monograph, Qur'an Commentary and the Bible Turn: A History of Muslim Exegetical Engagement with the Biblical Text was a co-winner of the BRAIS-De Gruyter Prize in the Study of Islam and the Muslim World and was published in 2024. Ross received his PhD in Religious Studies from Yale University in 2018.
Living on the Edge: Religious Profiles of American Muslim Youth A major development in the American religious landscape is the rise of the so-called "nones" – Americans who identify as having no religion at all. But to what extent does this development also characterize Muslims? While the faith lives of American Christian youth have been extensively studied, to date, there has not been a rigorous large-scale study that investigates the faith lives of American Muslim youth. In collaboration with Dr. Altaf Husain (Howard University) and Dr. Madiha Tahseen (Family and Youth Institute), Ross is investigating trends in Muslim youths' experiences of faith, practice, spirituality; their hermeneutical assumptions and methods; and their levels of religious affiliation and disaffiliation. His team plans to test existing theories, which have been primarily developed with Christian populations, against a Muslim population that differs significantly in its demography, modes of religious practice, and interpretive engagement with scripture, science, and modernity. |
Sharmin Sadequee
|
Sharmin Sadequee is a Cultural Anthropologist of religion and secularism. Her research on Muslim religious land use, examining Islamic cemeteries and regenerative mosques, has been funded by the Social Science Research Council and the American Council of Learned Societies. Her other current project includes an edited collection entitled, Secularism, Race, and the Politics of Islamophobia (University of Alberta Press, forthcoming 2025). Her writings have been published in Surveillance & Society, Anthropology Now, The Immanent Frame, and The Maydan. She holds a PhD in Cultural Anthropology from Michigan State University and completed a Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of Alberta's Chester Ronning Centre for the Study of Religion and Public Life in Canada.
For Land and Justice: The Role of Regenerative Mosque in the United States for a Sustainable Future An atmosphere of rising xenophobia, racism, and populism undermines the well-being of Muslims in the United States. Muslim cemeteries and mosques are targeted with accusations of extremism and causing environmental degradation, making it difficult for some Muslim Americans to meet their spiritual needs. Through the lens of a regenerative mosque project in Georgia, this research explores how a Muslim American community engages with Islamic cosmologies, nature-based solutions, market-driven eco-conscious sustainability practices, and green economy in redefining their relationships with the land and earth to co-exist with others in the era of Anthropocene. This project highlights how Muslim Americans create a place for themselves, the broader human community, and the natural ecosystem by engaging Islamic traditions and cultural values with sustainability science and technology to renew democracy and co-create the American future. |
Zhu Tang
|
Zhu Tang is a PhD student in the Department of Religion at the University of Florida. Before coming to UF, he earned his B.A. in Arabic from Sun Yat-Sen University and M.A. in the same field from University of International Business and Economics in Beijing. His MA thesis examines Mauritania’s state-building through analyses of the history of Islamization and the relation between Islam and politics in Mauritania. His primary interests focus on the intersection of Islam and politics, contemporary Muslim thoughts, and the intellectual history of various Sufi orders in West Africa, especially the Tijaniyya and the Qadiriyya in Mauritania.
Contestation in Silence: Intrareligious Interactions Between the Tijaniyya and the Qadiriyya Sufi Brotherhoods in Contemporary Mauritania As two of the most influential Sufi brotherhoods in contemporary Mauritania, both the Tijaniyya and the Qadiriyya are crucial actors that are unavoidable in scholarly examinations of Islam in Mauritania. It has been argued that the Mauritanian state has been keeping distance from religion and playing the role of “custodian” of different Islamic organizations. However, few academic publications have particularly focused on the state’s stance toward Sufism. How do contemporary Tijani and Qadiri Sufis interact with each other in Mauritania? What factors contribute to the possible friction and cooperation between them? How to understand the Mauritanian state’s seemingly neutral attitude towards these two brotherhoods? Based on comprehensive literature overview and empirical evidence collected during extensive field research, this project aims to further delve into this topic and hopefully be able to provide a glimpse of possible answers to these questions. |
Brannon Wheeler
|
Brannon Wheeler is a historian of religion with eleven published books, and nearly fifty peer-reviewed articles and book chapters. He has held visiting research positions at institutions in Saudi Arabia, Oman, Egypt, Abu Dhabi, Kuwait, Israel, Tunisia, Jordan, Qatar, and Lebanon in addition to France, Norway, and the UK. He is the founding editor of the Comparative Islamic Studies journal and book series comprised of more than a dozen books. He has received a number of high-profile fellowships including two senior research Fulbrights and fellowships from European and Middle Eastern research institutes. Professor Wheeler's most recent book, Animal Sacrifice and the Origins of Islam (Cambridge, 2022), is the result of 15 years of fieldwork in the Middle East, Asia, and Europe. It forms a companion to his previous Mecca and Eden: Ritual, Relics, and Territory in Islam (Chicago, 2006). He is currently working on three projects: objects that are supposed to be touched, Muslims and Islamophobia in Europe, and the perceived threat posed to religion by belief in UFOs.
Threats to Islam in Finland: On the Northern Edges of the World What accounts for the high level of discrimination against Muslims in Finland? Why are Muslims, in particular, singled out and targeted for hate speech and restrictive laws? Will conditions for Muslims in Finland continue to worsen with the recent electoral victories of the Finns party and other center-right politicians? These and related questions are examined by drawing upon recent scholarship, participant-observation ethnography, and interviews with key informants in Finland. Focus will be on several regions and cities including Helsinki, Espoo, Vantaa, Turku, Tampere, and Rovaniemi. Visits to include the Post-Secular Culture and a Changing Religious Landscape in Finland" project housed at the Abo Akademi University Centre of Excellence in Research at the University of Helsinki, in addition, preliminary research will be discussed at the Seventh Finnish Colloquium of Middle East and North African Studies (June 2024). |
About our research grant program
Please check our website periodically for calls for research grants and fellowships. We do not accept unsolicited proposals. For further information, please email us at [email protected]. Thank you!