2025 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.
Rania Awaad
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Dr. Rania Awaad, M.D., , is a Clinical Associate Professor of Psychiatry at the Stanford University School of Medicine, where she is the Director of the Stanford Muslim Mental Health & Islamic Psychology Lab, as well as Stanford University's Affiliate Chaplain and Affiliate Professor of Islamic Studies. In the community, she serves as the President of Maristan.org, a holistic mental health nonprofit serving Muslim communities, and the Director of The Rahmah Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to educating Muslim women and girls. In addition, she is a faculty member of Islamic Psychology at Cambridge Muslim College and The Islamic Seminary of America. She is also a Senior Fellow for Yaqeen Institute and the Institute of Social Policy and Understanding. Prior to studying medicine, she pursued classical Islamic studies in Damascus, Syria, and holds certifications (ijaza) in the Qur’an, Islamic Law, and other branches of the Islamic Sciences. Follow her @Dr.RaniaAwaad
Furthering Islamic Psychology Research and Practice around the Globe This project from the Stanford Muslim Mental Health and Islamic Psychology Lab, supported by CICW, examines the evolving field of Islamic psychology (IP). Through qualitative interviews with global experts, religious consultants, IP practitioners, and researchers, the study maps existing models, identifies points of consensus and divergence, and clarifies professional roles in addressing Muslim mental health needs. Findings will inform best practices for collaboration between religious and psychological care providers, refine Islamic psychotherapeutic approaches, and highlight culturally grounded alternatives to Western paradigms. Outcomes include comprehensive mapping, role clarification, practical guidelines, and dissemination through academic publications and practitioner guidebooks. |
Amilah Baksh
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Amilah Baksh is a Canadian Muslim woman of Indo-Caribbean descent. She has been a social work educator for more than a decade and is currently pursuing a PhD at Wilfrid Laurier University in social work. Her SSHRC-funded doctoral research uses critical autoethnography and narrative interviews with Muslim women educators to explore gendered Islamophobia in schools/faculties of social work, examining how identity and experiences of discrimination shape engagement with the field. Amilah is also a practicing social worker, whose experience spans child welfare, clinical social work and community organizing at the intersections of race, faith and mental health.
Developing Solidarities, De-reifying Whiteness: Islamic Approaches to Decolonization & Resistance in Academia Baksh examined a protected space for racialized students she facilitated from 2020-2024. Facing considerable racism, xenophobia, Islamophobia and institutional harm, racialized students within a Faculty of Social Work came together through NIRE (Normalizing Intercultural Relationships in Education) to engage in community-building. Students brought their whole selves into the institution – something that is difficult in classrooms rooted in Eurocentric approaches to education. She presented an analysis of two focus groups held with student participants who attended the space regularly. Using critical faith-based epistemology [CFBE] developed by Muslim feminist scholar Jasmin Zine (2004, 2008), She explores social justice and accountability, and the contributions of religious identities to resistance and liberation through NIRE. Zine’s framework engages anti-colonial, anti-racist and feminist notions of identity and spirituality, expanding understandings of political. NIRE served as counterpublic, a space that facilitated cross-racial solidarity, resistance and radical re-imaginings of what academia and social work practice could be. |
Youssef Chouhoud
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Youssef Chouhoud is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Christopher Newport University, where he is affiliated with the Reiff Center for Human Rights and Conflict Resolution. He is also a Public Fellow with the Public Religion Research Institute, producing accessible scholarship on religious, racial, and ethnic pluralism in America. Dr. Chouhoud's research models support for core democratic norms, with a particular focus on tolerance and a more general interest in how religiosity mediates social and political attitudes. He also has an extensive record of public commentary on Muslim and Arab American opinions and behaviors.
Accessing American Muslim Public Opinion: A Tool for Scholars, Advocates, and the Public This project is the first step toward a publicly accessible, data-driven resource that centralizes and curates public opinion data on American Muslims—both their own attitudes and how they are perceived by others. By extracting and harmonizing data from sources like Pew, ISPU, PRRI, and similar national surveys, the project will create an intuitive web-based tool for exploring descriptive statistics and cross-tabulations. The goal is to empower nonprofit leaders, scholars, educators, and advocates with actionable insights into this often-overlooked community. In line with CICW’s Islam on the Edges initiative, the project also challenges dominant narratives by treating American Muslims not as peripheral, but as vital contributors to political and cultural discourse. Ultimately, this prototype will lay the groundwork for a more expansive platform that reframes how we understand American Muslim public life. |
Amir Durić
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Amir Durić is Assistant Dean for Religious and Spiritual Life at Syracuse University. Before his current role, Durić served as Chaplain and Executive Director of Muslim Student Life at Syracuse University, as well as Chaplains’ Council Coordinator at Hendricks Chapel. He has over a decade of experience leading Muslim communities both domestically and abroad. Durić is a PhD candidate in Social Science at Syracuse University’s Maxwell School, and his research focuses on the experiences of Muslim students in higher education. As a practitioner-scholar, he is committed to bridging research and practice to foster equity, belonging, and interfaith collaboration across campuses.
Experiences of Muslim College Students The purpose of this study is to investigate a search for belonging among American Muslim college students and student groups. American Muslims are among the most diverse religious communities in the United States. This project aims to amplify the diverse voices of Muslim students who actively participate in the programming and activities intended for them, as well as those who occasionally participate or don't participate at all, capturing how either shapes their overall college experience and self-identification, highlighting challenges, barriers, and opportunities they navigate while on campus. Additionally, this study will focus on observing and understanding the dynamics involved in joining campus Muslim communities and groups, as well as the strategies employed to integrate racially and ethnically diverse students into those shared communities, how they are formed and maintained, and whether such communities contribute to students' sense of belonging. |
Raghad Ebied
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Dr. Raghad Ebied is a Research Fellow and Faculty Member at the Center for Leading Research in Education at Wilfrid Laurier University. She completed her PhD in Critical Policy, Equity and Leadership Studies at the Faculty of Education, Western University and is an emerging scholar with publications on compassionate and resilience based approaches to support holistic well-being, equity, and belonging. She is also an author and educator on faith and spirituality and as an Ontario Certified Teacher by profession, she has been serving as an education, training and research consultant for over 15 years with government, non-profit, community, schools, and universities, both in Canada and the Middle East.
Reviving ‘Ihsan' in Faith Education: Cultivating Compassionate and Resilient Schools and Communities through Divine Love, Quranic ‘Tadabbur' & ‘Tazkiya' This project will bring forward Islamic philosophies and approaches of education which emphasize the importance of ihsan - moral excellence- to support Muslim communities to thrive in pluralistic contexts and contribute to the betterment of humanity. The work will introduce a pedagogical approach which focuses on applying the Quranic and Prophetic values of Divine love and ihsan, in order to cultivate compassionate and resilient schools and communities which promote individual and collective holistic well-being (afiya). This methodology will focus on engaging with the Quran while internalizing its meanings (tadabbur), committing to a process of self-purification (tazkiya) and planning to excel and demonstrate positive change (ihsan) through drawing on positive psychology. It is anticipated that the project will inform a resource and training for educators to apply this methodology in their contexts. |
Ömer Es
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Ömer Faruk Es is a Ph.D. student at the Institute of Islamic Studies, McGill University, where he also earned an M.A. with a focus on the composition of the Qur'an. His research explores classifications of the levels of being in Sufi cosmology and metaphysics as they relate to the composition of the Qur'an, Prophetic traditions, and Sufi texts. He also examines interrelated structures of rhetorical delivery and tonal progression in Qur'anic composition as integral to the Muslim experience of the Qur'an. His current research focuses on the systematization of various dividers of the vertical cosmos and the human self in Sufi theory, as reflected in the Qur'anic structure.
The Cosmology of Qur’anic Ring Composition This project examines the structural relationship between ring composition in the Qur'an and various Sufi cosmological models, positing that the concentric structure functions as a symbol for the vertical cosmos. Sufi theory incorporates diverse intersecting categories in delineating the cosmos, including heavens (samāwāt), worlds (ʿawālim), individuations (ta'ayyunāt), presences (ḥaḍarāt), levels (marātib), stations (maqāmat), the manifestations of God’s names and attributes across these levels, as well as constituents of the human self (such as rūḥ, qalb, and nafs), and stages of wayfaring. A close structural analysis of Sūrat al-Baqara reveals distinct formal, thematic, and affective characteristics within each concentric Qur'anic structure that resonate with descriptors of specific cosmic levels, mutually clarifying one another and revealing systematic correspondence. As such, in addition to contributing to debates on the Qur'an's structural coherence, the project opens space for grounding Sufi cosmology and metaphysics in the Qur'an. |
Maryam Heydarkhani
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Maryam Heydarkhani is an architect and architectural historian specializing in nineteenth-century Iranian architecture, with a focus on madrasas and their evolving social and political roles. She holds a PhD from Shahid Beheshti University and is currently a Barakat Postdoctoral Fellow at the Khalili Research Centre, University of Oxford. Her research explores intersections of space, religious education, and cultural transformation, particularly through waqf documents. She has been a visiting scholar at the Universities of Vienna and Calgary, and has professional experience in the restoration of historic buildings and museums in Iran.
Negotiating Tradition and Modernity: The Evolution of Islamic Educational Spaces in Qajar Iran This project explores the architectural and socio-cultural transformation of Islamic educational spaces in Qajar Iran (1789–1925), focusing on how madrasas responded to shifting pedagogical, political, and cultural contexts. Moving beyond textual traditions, it examines how spatial design reflected evolving hierarchies, modernization processes, and transregional influences. Centered on the Marvi Madrasa in Tehran—a prominent institution that combined education, religious ritual, and political activism—the study demonstrates how architectural changes mirrored broader ideological and societal transitions. Drawing on endowment deeds (waqf), other written resources, historical maps, images, and architectural analysis, the project traces the madrasa’s evolution from a royal educational foundation to a dynamic public space shaped by new patrons and functions. It contributes to rethinking the role of religious educational institutions beyond their instructional purpose, revealing their deep entanglement with everyday urban life, civic identity, and political negotiation. |
Murad Idris
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Murad Idris is Associate Professor of Political Theory in the Department of Political Science at the University of Michigan. He is the author of War for Peace: Genealogies of a Violent Ideal in Western and Islamic Thought (Oxford, 2019), which examines how philosophers fantasize about “peace” in order to promote hierarchy, war, and repression. He previously held fellowships or positions at Cornell University, Columbia University, Harvard University, the University of Virginia, and the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. He received his PhD in Political Science from the University of Pennsylvania with specializations in Political Theory and Middle East Politics.
Hate Has a Dialogue Here: Genealogies of American Islamophobia and Anti-Palestinianism This project studies the long histories of how “hate” and “dialogue” function as rhetorical vehicles and conceptual nodes for anti-Muslim, anti-Arab, and anti-Palestinian policies and discourses in the United States over the last 70 years. It examines how “hate” has been sutured to Muslims in the West, and how demands for “dialogue” are deployed to silence them. Today, appeals to these terms transform critique, protest, and political demands into “hate” and dilute ongoing engagements, conversations, encounters, and subjectivities into the absence of “dialogue.” Across the United States, various initiatives at major universities have adopted this framework of being against “hate” and for “dialogue,” all with insufficient attention to paid the discursive grammar, long histories, and political structures of these very terms. The project thus contributes to the growing literatures about Muslims in the United States while at the same time situating their minoritized position in transnational, global, and historical perspective. |
Hale Inanoglu
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Dr. Hale Inanoglu is a qualitative researcher focused on how selves are made in the American religious landscape. Her dissertation, “Gender and Diaspora in the Making of Pious Subjectivity,” examined how women construct religious selfhood for different publics. She has also contributed to research on Christian congregational leadership and staffing. Her current project at George Mason University expands on how Muslim college students use social media to shape and express their religious identities. She teaches sociology as an adjunct professor at George Mason University.
Expanding the Study on Muslim College Students, Their MSA Engagement, and Presentation of Self This project builds on Dr. Hale Inanoglu’s forthcoming study on the “moral careers” of Muslim college students to further explore how young American Muslims use social media to shape their religious identities. Focusing on students involved in Muslim Student Associations (MSAs), the research examines how digital platforms serve as spaces for moral negotiation, identity formation, and religious self-presentation. Using surveys and interviews, the expanded study traces how students move from passive to intentional expressions of faith online, navigating tensions between personal belief, community expectations, and public visibility. Drawing on sociological frameworks from Becker and Goffman, the project highlights how social media becomes a site of spiritual development and civic engagement. The findings will contribute to broader understandings of religious identity formation in the American context and offer insights into how digital life is reshaping contemporary Muslim experience. |
Inaash Islam
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Inaash Islam is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at College of the Holy Cross. As a scholar of race and racism, gender, and religion, her research examines the post-9/11 implications of anti-Muslim racism, gendered embodiment practices, and Islamic feminism in the lives of Muslim women in America. She has a co-authored book with Dr. Saher Selod and Dr. Steve Garner, entitled A Global Racial Enemy: Muslims and 21st-Century Racism with Polity Press, and has published work in Du Bois Review, Feminist Formations, and the Journal of Arab and Muslim Media Research.
(Un)Veiling Expectations: Navigating Muslim American Womanhood This project examines the act and experience of taking off the hijab among Muslimah Americans, and contextualizes their unveiling within racialized, gendered, and religious discourses of the post-9/11 context. Using interviews with formerly-hijabi Muslimah Americans across the U.S., Islam analyzes their motivations for unveiling, the commendation and criticism they receive from their Muslim and non-Muslim American communities for having unveiled, and their utilization of Islamic feminist ijtihād (independent reasoning) to justify their decisions to unveil. In drawing on and contributing to scholarship on race and racialization and Islamic feminism, this project considers the recourse of Islamic feminist ijtihād in the toolkit of Muslimah Americans, and illustrates that (un)veiling is laden with racialized, gendered, and religious meaning in anti-Muslim contexts, shaping Muslim women’s relationships with themselves, their faith, and the communities to which they belong. |
Saqib Hafiz Khateeb
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Saqib Hafiz Khateeb is a Doctoral Candidate in Religious Studies at the University of Ottawa. He graduated from SOAS-University of London with an MA in Islamic Studies majoring in Islamic Law, and holds another master’s degree in Islamic Finance from Hamad Bin Khalifa University, and a BA in Islamic Law and Jurisprudence from the Islamic University of Madinah. In addition to formal education, he received intensive training and learning in many Islamic disciplines and holds ijazas in Islamic sacred texts and subject matters. Saqib was a Visiting Researcher at Ibn Haldun University. He was earlier a Research Fellow in Qatar, on various research projects on Islamic Finance and Islamic Studies. He has a few publications under his name in English and Arabic.
Reassessing Apostasy: Islamic Law, Arab Nones, and the Politics of Belief in Contemporary Muslim-Majority Societies Apostasy in Islam has traditionally been understood as the abandonment of Islam in favor of another religion. This, however, overlooks the growing demographic of nonreligious individuals in Muslim-majority countries. While previous scholarship has often focused on conversions to other Abrahamic religions, this study shifts attention to Arabs who identify as nonreligious or unaffiliated with any faith tradition. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with self-identified nonreligious Arabs currently residing in secular Turkey, this qualitative study explores how participants navigate identity, belonging, and visibility in contexts where apostasy is heavily stigmatized or criminalized. It also examines the strategies of self-concealment and resistance employed to manage these tensions. The research will contribute a chapter to the doctoral dissertation and will be disseminated through academic publications. Preliminary findings will be presented at conferences in Sweden (August 2025) and Slovakia (September 2025), informing debates on non-religion, and religious tolerance in the Arab world. |
Hatice Koç Kanca
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Hatice Koç Kanca, PhD, is a scholar of religion, spirituality, and Muslim chaplaincy, with particular interest in the intersections of faith, psychology, and healthcare. She earned her doctorate in Philosophy and Religious Studies and completed postdoctoral research in theology at Georgetown University. She also holds Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE) certification from MedStar Georgetown University Hospital. Currently, she is an Assistant Professor at Ankara Hacı Bayram Veli University and Visiting Faculty at Wesley Theological Seminary, while pursuing a second PhD in the psychology of religion. Her research engages questions of religious identity, spiritual care, and interfaith dynamics in pluralistic healthcare contexts. She resides with her family in the Washington, D.C. area.
The Muslim Chaplain Experience in America’s Hospitals: Traces of the Pluralist Paradigm in the Field This study offers a critical analysis of the evolving field of pastoral care within American hospitals, foregrounding the experiences of Muslim chaplains in an increasingly pluralistic healthcare context. Pastoral care, long rooted in Christian traditions, has progressively adapted to address the spiritual and emotional needs of a religiously and culturally diverse patient population through an inclusive, pluralist framework. Focusing on how pluralist paradigms inform contemporary care practices and the professional trajectories of Muslim chaplains -with attention to training, institutional equity, career progression, and systemic barriers- the study draws on multi-site fieldwork conducted in hospitals across the DMW region, in-depth interviews, ethnographic observation, and institutional policy analysis. It advances nuanced insights into the enactment of pluralism within healthcare chaplaincy and the distinctive positioning of Muslim chaplains in this shifting professional landscape. |
Shahana Munazir
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Shahana Munazir is a Ph.D. candidate in Anthropology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her dissertation examines the intersection of aspiration and ethical labor of care and patience in the lives of young Muslim women in North India. Prior to joining UW-Madison, Shahana received the Chief Minister's Fellowship to work with the Government of Delhi's Department of Social Justice in 2018. She holds a B.A. in History from St. Stephen's College, University of Delhi and an MPhil in Social Anthropology from the University of Oxford, Somerville College. Her ethnographic research on khidmat (care) has been published in the South Asia Multidisciplinary Academic Journal and featured in Anthropology News.
Crafting 'Behtar Zindagi:' Rethinking Aspiration, Ethical Labor, and Muslim Women's Mobility in Urban India Munazir's dissertation interrogates the convergence of aspiration and Islamic ethics among middle class Muslim women in North India, problematizing conventional trajectories of social mobility within India's majoritarian landscape. With over fourteen months of ethnographic work, her research theorizes how women reconstitute futurity through ethical frameworks anchored in qadr (divine destiny). Moving beyond binaries of agency and submission, she argues that women's quotidian discourse on destiny constitute "ethical labor"—the deliberate cultivation of sabr (patience) and khidmat (care) as modalities of social mobility. The dissertation contributes to critical conversations on Islamic becoming by demonstrating how ethics in discourse and practice functions as a site of world-making for marginalized subjects, offering new feminist frameworks for understanding moral agency within conditions of systematic exclusion. |
Tamim Raihan
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Tamim Raihan is a PhD student in the Religious Studies program at Arizona State University, with a research focus on interfaith relations in the United States, particularly within Muslim communities. His work explores how American Muslims engage in interreligious dialogue, community building, and identity formation in pluralistic contexts. Originally from Bangladesh and based in Qatar since 2011, Tamim combines academic research with active community involvement. He brings experience in journalism, education, and translation to his scholarly pursuits, reflecting a deep commitment to fostering mutual understanding across faiths and cultures through both academic inquiry and public engagement.
Exploring Interfaith Marriage Rights for Muslim Women in the United States This research project explores the socio-legal, cultural, and theological dimensions of interfaith marriages involving Muslim women in the United States. While such unions are legally recognized in the U.S., they often face religious resistance within traditional Islamic communities. The study investigates how Muslim women navigate these tensions between secular rights and religious norms, especially in a pluralistic society. Using qualitative methods such as interviews and focus groups, the project will center women’s lived experiences and examine evolving interpretations of Islamic law concerning interfaith marriage. The research aims to bridge gaps between traditional and progressive perspectives, provide scholarly insights, and promote community dialogue. By addressing a sensitive yet increasingly relevant issue, the project contributes to broader discussions on religious authority, gender equity, and integration of Muslim communities in the West. Outcomes will include academic publications, community workshops, and policy recommendations to foster inclusive engagement on interfaith matters within Muslim contexts. |
Esra Tunc
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Esra Tunc is an assistant professor of Religion at San Diego State University. Prior to joining the faculty at SDSU, she held a postdoctoral appointment at the John C. Danforth Center on Religion and Politics at Washington University in St. Louis. She earned her Ph.D. in Religious Studies from the University of California, Santa Barbara. Her research interests include Islam, capital, technology, and communal and cosmological relationalities, and has been supported by grants and awards from the Social Science Research Council and Lake Institute on Faith and Giving, among others.
Technically Relational: Islam and Capital in the United States This book project analyzes how American Muslims have sought to make wealth-building halal, or permissible, in the age of financial technology. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in American Muslim finance companies, philanthropic organizations, and alternative economic projects, and grounded in historical research, the book argues that mainstream American Muslim institutions have reformulated and technified the relational aspects of the religion, including how wealth makes them accountable to the earth's inhabitants. The project also explores the counterexample of Muslim solidarity economy projects that ground their work in relational ethics. Ultimately, this project contributes to discussions in the study of religion and related disciplines about possibilities for engaging with the relational aspects of religion and economy. |
Aisajiang Youshe
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Aisajiang Youshe is a PhD candidate in Inner Asian and Altaic Studies at Harvard University. His research explores the history of Islam and Muslim societies in China, Inner Asia, and South Asia, with a focus on transregional mobility in the early modern period. He examines the circulation of ideas, individuals, and material culture—especially Sufi lineages, legal traditions, and educational networks—between the Persianate world and China. Combining archival research with digital humanities methods and anthropological perspectives, his work highlights the intellectual and institutional linkages that shaped Muslim communities across Asia. He holds an MA from Central European University.
From Musulman to Nation: Governance, Ethnicization, and Resistance in China, Central Asia, and Bosnia This project explores the historical evolution of the term "Musulman / Muslimani" as a religious, ethnic, and communal identity across China, Central Asia, and Bosnia. Once broadly signifying "Muslim," the term acquired regionally specific meanings shaped by Sufi networks, systems of governance, and sociopolitical boundaries. It distinguished sedentary Turkic-speaking Muslims in Central Asia, Chinese-speaking Muslims (Huihui) in China, and Ottoman-era Muslims in Bosnia. In the 19th and 20th centuries, Qing, Soviet, PRC, and Yugoslav regimes imposed rigid ethnonational labels that redefined Islamic identity. Through archival research and comparative analysis, this study examines how Muslim communities negotiated these classifications and their enduring legacy in state governance and religious self-understanding. |
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!