CIK Talks is a platform for noted Muslim intellectuals and thought leaders to address critical issues facing the Ummah and ideas shaping the modern world. 
Disclaimer: All views expressed in CIK Talks are those of the speaker and do not necessarily represent the teachings, views, and opinions of the Centre for Islamic Knowledge.

Islamic Theology and the Problem of Evil

Sunday, September 25th at 12 PM EST (29 Safar)
Zoom Webinar 

​Presented by: Dr. Safaruk Chowdhury 

Like their Jewish and Christian co-religionists, Muslims have grappled with how God, who is perfectly good, compassionate, merciful, powerful, and wise permits intense and profuse evil and suffering in the world. This virtual CIK Talk will explore various problems of evil including human disability, animal suffering, and Hell. Each study argues in favour of a particular kind of explanation or justification (theodicy) for the respective evil. Dr. Chowdhury will unpack the notion of evil and its conceptualization within the mainstream Sunni theological tradition and the various ways in which theologians and philosophers within that tradition have advanced different types of theodicies.
Dr. Safaruk Chowdhury studied Philosophy at Kings College London completing it with the accompanying Associate of Kings College (AKC) award. He then traveled to Cairo to study the traditional Islamic Studies curricula at al-Azhar University. He returned to the UK to complete his MA at the School of Oriental and African Studies with distinction. His doctoral dissertation was on the eminent Sufi hagiographer and theoretician Abu 'Abd al-Rahman al-Sulami (d. 412/1021) published as A Sufi Apologist of Nishapur: The Life and Thought of Abu 'Abd al-Rahman al-Sulami (Sheffield: Equinox Publishing, 2019). Chowdhury's research interests, in addition to Sufism at the moment, are in paraconsistent logic, metaphysics, ethics, and epistemology with keen interest in how these subjects were articulated and discussed within the Islamic intellectual tradition - especially within kalam theology. His most recent book is entitled Islamic Theology and the Problem of Evil (New York and Cairo: AUC Press, 2021) which is the first work in Islamic Studies to treat the topic within the analytic theology approach. Chowdhury is currently lead researcher on the project Beyond Foundationalism: New Horizons in Muslim Analytic Theology funded under a John Templeton Foundation grant award in association with Cambridge Muslim College and Aziz Foundation. Chowdhury runs the Islamic Analytic Theology website and his academic work can be found on his Academia.edu page.

Discussant: 

Samir Hussain earned his Hon. BSc in the Life Sciences from McMaster University in 2009 but was never content with just learning biology. He also took courses in Ecology, Anthropology, History, Political Science, Cosmology and Astronomy. After graduating he moved to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia for 6 years where he worked as an English Teacher at King Saud University while simultaneously studying the sciences of the Arabic language, Shafi Fiqh and Usul in which he received licenses to teach from his teachers who hailed from Somalia and Kerala. He then moved to Cairo where he received licenses to teach texts in Hadith and Sunni theology from scholars at Al-Azhar University. He combines a cheerful and energizing personality with a deep desire to see excellence and mastery in learning from his students. His current research interests are focused on the nexus of classical Islamic theology/kalam, contemporary philosophy, and the natural sciences.

Previous Talks:

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Dr. Usaama al-Azami is a Departmental Lecturer in Contemporary Islamic Studies at the University of Oxford, where he also completed his BA in Arabic and Islamic Studies. He then earned an MA and Ph.D. in Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University.

Alongside his university career, he also earned an ‘Alimiyyah from the Al-Salam Institute under the guidance of Shaykh Mohammad Akram Nadwi. He has travelled extensively throughout the Middle East, living for five years in the region and has received ijazāt (certificates of authorization) from several Muslim scholars, including Shaykhs Ahmad ‘Ali Lajpuri, ‘Abd al-Rahman al-Kattani, Yunus Jaunpuri, Muhammad Rabi,’ ‘Abd al-Wahhab al-Turayri,’ Muhammad al-Yaqoubi, Muhammad Al Rashid, Nizam Ya’qubi, and Ziyad al-Tukla. 

Usaama is primarily interested in the interaction between Islam and modernity with a special interest in modern developments in Islamic political thought. His first book, Islam and the Arab Revolutions (Hurst Publishers/Oxford University Press, 2021), looks at the way in which influential Islamic scholars responded to the Arab uprisings of 2011 through 2013. His Ph.D., which is a separate project which he hopes to develop into a monograph in the near future, is entitled "Modern Islamic Political Thought: Islamism in the Arab World from the Late 20th to the Early 21st Centuries". In it, he explores how Arab ulama of a mainstream "Islamist" orientation have engaged Western political concepts such as democracy, secularism and the nation-state, selectively adopting and assimilating aspects of these ideas into their understanding of Islam. His broader interests extend to a range of disciplines from the Islamic scholarly tradition from the earliest period of Islam down to the present.

In addition to academic writing, he is an occasional commentator on public affairs pertaining to Muslims in outlets such as Middle East Eye, HuffPost, Muslim Matters, and TRT World.
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Dr. Ramon Harvey is Aziz Foundation Lecturer in Islamic Studies at Cambridge Muslim College where he teaches Revealed Foundations on the BA in Islamic Studies. He received his MA and Ph.D. in Islamic studies from SOAS, University of London. His research focuses on Qur’anic studies, philosophical theology, and ethics, both studying the intellectual history of these disciplines and making his own contemporary interventions. Dr. Harvey’s first book, The Qur’an and the Just Society, was published by Edinburgh University Press in 2018. His latest book is Transcendent God, Rational World: A Maturidi Theology (Edinburgh University Press, 2021). It is a work of contemporary Muslim theology, drawing substantially on the Maturidi tradition (especially its eponym Abu Mansur al-Maturidi), as well as modern analytic and continental philosophy.

He is also a member of the Editorial Board for the Journal of Comparative Islamic Studies and the series editor of the Edinburgh Studies in Islamic Scripture and Theology. Alongside his academic training, he has spent several years studying with traditionally trained Islamic scholars in the UK, has attended an intensive programme at Al-Azhar in Cairo, graduated from the Al-Salam Institute Islamic Scholarship Programme and was awarded the shahada al-‘alimiyya (Licence in Islamic Scholarship) under the supervision of Shaykh Mohammad Akram Nadwi.
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Dr. Yakoob Ahmed is a graduate from the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, where he completed his Ph.D. in Late Ottoman history with a focus on Ottoman Constitutionalism and the role of the Ottoman ulema. He is currently a staff member at Istanbul University’s ilahiyat (theology) faculty, where he specializes in teaching Islamic history, Ottoman history, Islamic civilization and modern Islamic thought. Dr. Yakoob is a regular columnist for TRT World and also has guest-appeared in a host of podcasts and written for various academic and Muslim intellectual platforms. His interests include late Ottoman history, the history of nationalism and the nation-state in the Muslim world, collective memory construction, Islamic studies and Turkish politics.
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Dr. Salman Sayyid is a Professor at the University of Leeds, where he holds a Chair in Social Theory and Decolonial Thought and is the Head of the School of Sociology and Social Policy. He is also a Senior Research Associate at Al-Sharq Forum. Previously, Sayyid was a Professor and the inaugural director of the International Centre for Muslim and Non-Muslim Understanding, in Australia. As the center’s director, Sayyid made a film entitled “Everything You Wanted to Know About Muslims But Were Afraid to Ask” and worked with the Australia Day Council to develop a schema for an annual national Award for Muslims and Non-Muslim Understanding. He has held academic positions in London, Manchester and Adelaide. Professor Sayyid is a political theorist, whose work engages with critical theory and the politics and culture of the Global South. Sayyid’s work is recognized for its innovative and transformative impact. His studies of political Islam, Islamophobia and racism, have been highly influential and translated into half a dozen languages. His areas of expertise are in Decolonial thought; poststructuralist political theory, critical Muslim studies; analysis of Islamophobia and racism and historical and relational macro-sociology. 

Some of his major publications include A Fundamental Fear: Eurocentrism and the Emergence of Islamism (Zed Book, 1997), A Postcolonial People: South Asians in Britain (Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 2006), Thinking Through Islamophobia (Columbia University Press, 2010), Racism, Governance, and Public Policy: Beyond Human Rights (Routledge, 2013), Recalling The Caliphate: Decolonisation and World Order (Hurst & Company, 2014) and Islamism as Philosophy: Decolonial Horizons (Bloomsbury Academic, 2017).  Currently, Sayyid is leading a major inter-disciplinary research program based on a dialogue between decolonial thought and political theory. As part of this research agenda, Sayyid founded a new international peer-reviewed academic journal ReOrient: The Journal of Critical Muslim Studies. He is a frequent contributor to national and international media.
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Dr. Emad Hamdeh is an Associate Professor of Arabic and Islamic Studies at Embry Riddle University. He has published several articles on contemporary Muslim reform movements and Islamic law. He is also the author of The Necessity of Hadith in Islam (International Islamic Publishing House, 2011) and Salafism and Traditionalism: Scholarly Authority in Modern Islam (Cambridge University Press, 2020). He holds a Ph.D. and MPhil in Theology from the University of Exeter (United Kingdom) and an M.A. in Islamic Studies and Christian-Muslim Relations from Hartford Seminary (United States).
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Dr. Jasser Auda is a scholar of Islam, whose scholarship has focused on an objective-based approach to the understanding of the Qurʾān and Prophetic traditions. He is currently the President of Maqasid Institute, an international network of research centres and educational projects, a Professor and Al-Shatibi Chair of Maqāṣid Studies at the International Peace College in South Africa and the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Contemporary Maqāṣid Studies. He is a Member of the European Council for Fatwa and Research, Fiqh Council of North America and the International Union of Muslims Scholars.

He holds a Ph.D. in the Philosophy of Islamic Law from the University of Wales (UK), a Ph.D. in Systems Analysis from the University of Waterloo (Canada), and an M. Jur. thesis on the Maqāṣid of the Sharīʿah from the Islamic American University (United States). Early in his life, he memorized the Qurʾān and undertook traditional studies at the Study Circles of Al-Azhar Mosque in Cairo, Egypt, where he learned from a number of distinguished scholars of Qurʾān, Usūl and Ḥadīth.

Previously, he worked as a professor at the universities of Waterloo, Ryerson and Carleton in Canada, Alexandria University in Egypt, Faculty of Islamic Studies in Qatar, the American University of Sharjah in UAE, and the University of Brunei Darussalam in Brunei. He was also a Founding Director of Al-Maqasid Research Center at Al-Furqan Islamic Heritage Foundation, UK; a Founding Deputy Director of the Center for Islamic Legislation and Ethics, Qatar; and a Fellow of the Islamic Fiqh Academy, India.  Professor Auda has lectured on Islam in many countries across the world and has authored 25 books in Arabic and English, including the best-selling Maqasid Al-Shariah: A Beginners Guide, which has been translated into 30 languages. 
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Dr. Abdullah al-Ahsan is a professor of comparative civilization studies. He most recently taught at the Department of Political Science and International Relations at Istanbul Şehir University and the Department of History and Civilization at the International Islamic University Malaysia. Dr. Ahsan holds a MA in Islamic Studies from McGill University and a Ph.D. in History from the University of Michigan.
 
He has contributed many articles on the relationship between contemporary Islamic and Western civilizations. His works include: The Organization of the Islamic Conference: Introduction to an Islamic Political Institution (International Institute of Islamic Thought, 1988) and Ummah or Nation: Identity Crisis in Contemporary Muslim Society (Islamic Foundation, 1992). He has edited along with Stephen B Young, Guidance for Good Governance: Explorations in Qur'anic, Scientific, and Cross-cultural Approaches (International Islamic University Malaysia, 2008 and 2013). His latest edited book Qur'anic Guidance for Good Governance: A Contemporary Perspective (2017), has been published by Palgrave Macmillan. His books and articles have been translated into Arabic, Bengali, Bosnian, Turkish, and Urdu.
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Dr. Joseph J. Kaminski is an Associate Professor in the Department of International Relations at the International University of Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina. His current research interests include Religion and Politics, Comparative Political Theory, and New Approaches to Islamic Public Reason. His books include Islam, Liberalism, and Ontology: A Critical Re-evaluation (Routledge, 2021) and The Contemporary Islamic Governed State: A Reconceptualization (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017). He is a graduate of Rutgers University, City University of New York (CUNY) and Purdue University where he completed his Ph.D. 
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​Dr. Usaama al-Azami is a Departmental Lecturer in Contemporary Islamic Studies at the University of Oxford, where he also completed his BA in Arabic and Islamic Studies. He then earned an MA and Ph.D. in Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University.

Alongside his university career, he also earned an ‘Alimiyyah from the Al-Salam Institute under the guidance of Shaykh Mohammad Akram Nadwi. He has travelled extensively throughout the Middle East, living for five years in the region and has received ijazāt (certificates of authorization) from several Muslim scholars, including Shaykhs Ahmad ‘Ali Lajpuri, ‘Abd al-Rahman al-Kattani, Yunus Jaunpuri, Muhammad Rabi,’ ‘Abd al-Wahhab al-Turayri,’ Muhammad al-Yaqoubi, Muhammad Al Rashid, Nizam Ya’qubi, and Ziyad al-Tukla. 

Usaama is primarily interested in the interaction between Islam and modernity with a special interest in modern developments in Islamic political thought. His first book, Islam and the Arab Revolutions (Hurst Publishers/Oxford University Press, 2021), looks at the way in which influential Islamic scholars responded to the Arab uprisings of 2011 through 2013. His Ph.D., which is a separate project which he hopes to develop into a monograph in the near future, is entitled "Modern Islamic Political Thought: Islamism in the Arab World from the Late 20th to the Early 21st Centuries". In it, he explores how Arab ulama of a mainstream "Islamist" orientation have engaged Western political concepts such as democracy, secularism and the nation-state, selectively adopting and assimilating aspects of these ideas into their understanding of Islam. His broader interests extend to a range of disciplines from the Islamic scholarly tradition from the earliest period of Islam down to the present.

In addition to academic writing, he is an occasional commentator on public affairs pertaining to Muslims in outlets such as Middle East Eye, HuffPost, Muslim Matters, and TRT World.
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Professor Ovamir Anjum is Imam Khattab Endowed Chair of Islamic Studies at the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies, University of Toledo. His work focuses on the nexus of theology, ethics, politics and law in classical and medieval Islam, with comparative interest in Western Thought. His interests are united by a common theoretical focus on epistemology or views of intellect/reason in various domains of Islamic thought, ranging from politics (siyasa), law (fiqh), theology (kalam), falsafa (Islamic philosophy) and spirituality (Sufism, mysticism, and asceticism). He brings this historical studies to bear on issues in contemporary Islamic thought and movements and is currently researching developments in Islamic political thought in the wake of the Arab Uprisings of 2011. While trained as an historian, his work is essentially interdisciplinary, drawing on the fields of classical Islamic studies, political philosophy, and cultural anthropology. 
 
He obtained his Ph.D. in Islamic Intellectual history in the Department of History, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Masters in Social Sciences from the University of Chicago, Masters in Computer Science from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a Bachelors in Nuclear Engineering and Physics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Before higher education, his Islamic training began at home while growing up in Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and the United States with a broad range of scholars including his remarkable grandmother, and continued as he studied fiqh with South Asian Ḥanafī and Ahl-e-hadīs scholars and usūl al-fiqh and qirā’āt of the Quran with scholars from Egypt’s Al-Azhar and Syria. He is the author of  Politics, Law and Community in Islamic Thought: The Taymiyyan Moment (Cambridge University Press, 2012). He has translated Madarij al-Salikin (Ranks of Divine Seekers, Brill 2020) by Ibn al-Qayyim (d. 1351), one of the greatest Islamic spiritual classics, which upon completion will be the largest single-author English translation of an Arabic text. His current projects include a survey of Islamic history and a monograph on Islamic political thought. Dr. Ovamir is the Founder of the Ummatics Colloquium, the Editor of the American Journal of Islam and Society and the Editor-in-Chief of the Editorial Review Board at the Yaqeen Institute for Islamic Research.
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​Dr. Ermin Sinanović is executive director of the Center for Islam in the Contemporary World (CICW) at Shenandoah University, where he is also Scholar in Residence. Before joining CICW, he was director of research and academic programs at the International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT). He was also a faculty associate in research, Southeast Asian Program at Cornell University.

Sinanović studied for a Master of Arts and a Ph.D. in Political Science at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, Syracuse University. He obtained two bachelor's degrees (one in the Qur’an and Sunnah studies, the other in political science) from the International Islamic University Malaysia, and a master's degree in Islamic civilization from the International Institute of Islamic Thought and Civilization (ISTAC) in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

Sinanović’s research interests include transnational Islamic revival, revival and reform in Islam, Islamic political thought, Southeast Asian politics, Islam and politics, and leadership in higher education. His work has been published in peer-reviewed journals and in edited volumes, including Politics, Religion and Ideology, Muslim-Christian Relations, American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences, and Encyclopedia of Islam and the Muslim World. 

Sinanović sits on editorial boards of two academic journals: Politics, Religion and Ideology (Taylor & Francis) and Context (Center for Advanced Studies, Sarajevo). He has reviewed book manuscripts and articles for Edinburgh University Press, Routledge, Palgrave Macmillan USA, American Political Science Review, Journal of Global Ethics, and Journal of Muslims in Europe, among others.
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Dr. Katherine Bullock is a Lecturer in the Department of Political Science at the University of Toronto, where she also completed her Ph.D. Her teaching focus is political Islam from a global perspective, and her research focuses on Muslims in Canada, their history, contemporary lived experiences, political and civic engagement, debates on the veil, and media representations of Islam and Muslims.  She was the editor of the American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences from 2003 – 2008 and the Vice-President of the Association of Muslim Social Scientists of North America from 2006 - 2009.
 
Her publications include Muslim Women Activists in North America: Speaking for Ourselves (University of Texas Press) and Rethinking Muslim Women and the Veil: Challenging Historical and Modern Stereotypes (International Institute of Islamic Thought), which has been translated into Arabic, French, and Turkish. She is also the Director of Research of the Tessellate Institute, a research institute that explores and documents the lived experiences of Muslims in Canada and the President of Compass Books, dedicated to publishing top-quality books about Islam and Muslims in English. Originally from Australia, she lives in Oakville with her husband and children. She embraced Islam in 1994.
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Professor Ovamir Anjum is Imam Khattab Endowed Chair of Islamic Studies at the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies, University of Toledo. His work focuses on the nexus of theology, ethics, politics and law in classical and medieval Islam, with comparative interest in Western Thought. His interests are united by a common theoretical focus on epistemology or views of intellect/reason in various domains of Islamic thought, ranging from politics (siyasa), law (fiqh), theology (kalam), falsafa (Islamic philosophy) and spirituality (Sufism, mysticism, and asceticism). He brings this historical studies to bear on issues in contemporary Islamic thought and movements and is currently researching developments in Islamic political thought in the wake of the Arab Uprisings of 2011. While trained as an historian, his work is essentially interdisciplinary, drawing on the fields of classical Islamic studies, political philosophy, and cultural anthropology. 
 
He obtained his Ph.D. in Islamic Intellectual history in the Department of History, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Masters in Social Sciences from the University of Chicago, Masters in Computer Science from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a Bachelors in Nuclear Engineering and Physics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Before higher education, his Islamic training began at home while growing up in Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and the United States with a broad range of scholars including his remarkable grandmother, and continued as he studied fiqh with South Asian Ḥanafī and Ahl-e-hadīs scholars and usūl al-fiqh and qirā’āt of the Quran with scholars from Egypt’s Al-Azhar and Syria. He is the author of  Politics, Law and Community in Islamic Thought: The Taymiyyan Moment (Cambridge University Press, 2012). He has translated Madarij al-Salikin (Ranks of Divine Seekers, Brill 2020) by Ibn al-Qayyim (d. 1351), one of the greatest Islamic spiritual classics, which upon completion will be the largest single-author English translation of an Arabic text. His current projects include a survey of Islamic history and a monograph on Islamic political thought. Dr. Ovamir is the Founder of the Ummatics Colloquium, the Editor of the American Journal of Islam and Society and the Editor-in-Chief of the Editorial Review Board at the Yaqeen Institute for Islamic Research.
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Professor Mohammad H. Fadel is Professor at the University of Toronto's Faculty of Law, which he joined in January 2006. Professor Fadel wrote his Ph.D. dissertation on legal process in medieval Islamic law while at the University of Chicago and received his JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. Professor Fadel was admitted to the Bar of New York in 2000 and practiced law with the firm of Sullivan & Cromwell LLP in New York, New York, where he worked on a wide variety of corporate finance transactions and securities-related regulatory investigations. Professor Fadel also served as a law clerk to the Honorable Paul V. Niemeyer of the United States Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit and the Honorable Anthony A. Alaimo of the United States District Court for the Southern District of Georgia. Professor Fadel has published numerous articles in Islamic legal history and Islam and liberalism.
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Dr. Muzaffar Iqbal is the founder-president of the Center for Islamic Sciences, (previously, Center for Islam and Science) and General Editor of the Integrated Encyclopedia of the Qur'an, the first English-language reference work on the Qur'an based on fourteen centuries of Muslim scholarship.
 
Dr. Iqbal has held academic and research positions at University of Saskatchewan (1979-1984), University of Wisconsin-Madison (1984-85), and McGill University (1986). During 1990-1996, he worked as Director Scientific Information, Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC) Committee on Scientific and Technological Cooperation (COMSTECH). He was Director of Pakistan Academy of Sciences during 1997-98. In 1999, Dr. Iqbal became the Program Director for the Muslim World for the Science-Religion Course Program of the Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences (CTNS), Berkeley, USA, a position he held until the end of the Program in 2001.

Dr. Iqbal has written, translated, and edited twenty-one books and published nearly one hundred papers on various aspects of Islam, its spiritual and intellectual traditions and on the relationship between Islam and science, and Islam and the West. He co-translated, with Dr. Zafar Ishaq Ansari, Volume VII of Tafhim al-Qur’an (Islamic Foundation, 2001). He contributed, as consultant, to Concentric Circles—Nurturing Awe and Wonder in Early Childhood and is one of the founders of Muslim Education Foundation (Canada), a not-for-profit organization dedicated to providing resources and services to educators, students and parents for a process of learning built on the Qur’anic worldview.

He is the founding editor of the Islam & Science (renamed as Journal of Islamic Sciences in 2013), a journal that explores, from Islamic perspectives, religious and philosophical implications of data and theories originating in the physical, biological, and social sciences. He is also the Series Editor for Ashgate's Islam and Science: Historic and Contemporary Perspectives (2012, reprinted by Routledge), a four volume work that brings together the most important and influential articles dealing with various aspects of the relationship between Islam and science.

His other publications include:
​For a more detailed list of publications, see publications.
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Professor Mohammad H. Fadel is Professor at the University of Toronto's Faculty of Law, which he joined in January 2006. Professor Fadel wrote his Ph.D. dissertation on legal process in medieval Islamic law while at the University of Chicago and received his JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. Professor Fadel was admitted to the Bar of New York in 2000 and practiced law with the firm of Sullivan & Cromwell LLP in New York, New York, where he worked on a wide variety of corporate finance transactions and securities-related regulatory investigations. Professor Fadel also served as a law clerk to the Honorable Paul V. Niemeyer of the United States Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit and the Honorable Anthony A. Alaimo of the United States District Court for the Southern District of Georgia. Professor Fadel has published numerous articles in Islamic legal history and Islam and liberalism.