Building Bridges Seminar

Hussein Abdulsater is assistant professor in the Program in Arabic and Middle Eastern Studies at Notre Dame University. His research focuses on Muslim theological and ethical discourses in their interactions with each other and with non-Muslim discourses, and it is also concerned with depictions of major theological themes and schools in classical Arabic literature and historiography. The author of Shiʿi Doctrine, Muʿtazili Theology: al-Sharīf al-Murtaḍā and the Systematization of Imami Discourse (2017), he has also published articles on the confessional and communal development of Shi'ism, sixteenth-century Qur'anic exegesis, and on the freedom of conscience in classical Islamic theology. He holds a Ph.D. in religious studies from Yale University and an M.A. in Arabic language and literature from the American University of Beirut.

Asma Afsaruddin is a professor in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures at Indiana University, Bloomington. She specializes in the religious and political thought of Islam, Qur’an and hadith, Islamic intellectual history, and gender. In addition to numerous articles, her books include Contemporary Issues in Islam (2015); Striving in the Path of God: Jihad and Martyrdom in Islamic Thought and Praxis (2013); Islam, the State and Political Authority: Medieval Issues and Modern Concerns (2011); and The First Muslims: History and Memory (2008). Afsaruddin is a member of the academic council of Georgetown's Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding and of the American Academy of Liberal Education's board of trustees. She has received research funding from the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation and Carnegie Corporation of New York, which named her a Carnegie Scholar in 2005. Afsaruddin earned her Ph.D. at Johns Hopkins University and previously taught at the University of Notre Dame and Harvard University.

Ahmet Alibašić is assistant professor in the Faculty of Islamic Studies at the University of Sarejevo, where he teaches Islamic culture and civilization courses. His doctorate, completed at the Faculty of Political Science of the University of Sarajevo, focused on Islamic opposition in the Arab world. He is the director of the Center for Advanced Studies, Sarajevo, a senior associate of the Democratization Policy Council, and chairman of Gazi Husrev-bey Library. He is one of the editors of Yearbook of Muslims in Europe (2009–2013) and Journal of Muslims in Europe. From 2003 to 2007 he served as deputy president of the Association of Islamic Scholars in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Ovamir Anjum is Imam Khattab Endowed Chair of Islamic Studies at the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies, University of Toledo. His work is interdisciplinary, focusing on the nexus of theology, ethics, politics, and law in classical and medieval Islam, with comparative interest in Western thought; he also studies contemporary issues such as developments in Islamic political thought in the wake of the Arab Uprisings of 2011. He is the author of Politics, Law and Community in Islamic Thought: The Taymiyyan Moment (2012); and is near completion of a translation of a popular Islamic spiritual and theological classic, Madarij al-Salikin (Ranks of Divine Seekers) by Ibn al-Qayyim (d. 1351). He holds a Ph.D. in Islamic intellectual history from University of Wisconsin-Madison, with master's degrees in social sciences from the University of Chicago and in computer science from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Mehdi Azaiez is a professor of Islamic studies at the Catholic University of Louvain (UCLouvain) in Belgium. He also manages a website dedicated to Qur’anic studies. Previously, he was an instructor on Islamic studies and co-director of the Qur’an Seminar, an international project based at the University of Notre Dame. He is a member of the publications and research committee of the International Qur’anic Studies Association, a scientific member of the Bulletin Critique des Annales Islamologiques, and an associate researcher at the Institute for Islamic and Muslim World Studies (Institute de Recherches et d’Etudes sur le Monde Musulman). His publications include Le contre-discours coranique (2015). Azaiez holds a Ph.D. in Islamic studies from the University of Aix-Marseille.

Jonathan Chaplin is a member of the Divinity Faculty, University of Cambridge, and a research associate of the religion and society think tank Theos. He was director of the Kirby Laing Institute for Christian Ethics at Tyndale House, Cambridge, United Kingdom, from 2006 to 2017. His research interests include Christian political thought; religion, liberalism, and multiculturalism; religion, the state, and civil society; Christian democracy; and environmental political theory. His publications include Herman Dooyeweerd: Christian Philosopher of State and Civil Society (2011), God and the EU: Faith in the European Project (2016, ed. with Gary Wilton), God and Global Order: The Power of Religion in American Foreign Policy (2010, ed. with Robert Joustra), and Talking God: The Legitimacy of Religious Public Reasoning (2009), plus several other edited volumes. He holds a Ph.D from the London School of Economics and Political Science and M.Phil. in political theory from the Institute for Christian Studies in Toronto.

Stephen Cook is the Catherine N. McBurney Professor of Old Testament Language and Literature at Virginia Theological Seminary. His recent publications include The Prophets: Introducing Israel’s Prophetic Writings (2022), Ezekiel 38–48: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (volume 22B of the Anchor Yale Bible series, 2018), and Reading Deuteronomy (2015). His other publications include additional books, numerous journal articles, and several introductions and annotations to biblical books for both the New Oxford Annotated Bible and the Harper Collins Study Bible, as well as several entries for the New Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible. He is also a team member for the NRSV Updated Edition (NRSVue) of the Bible (2022). He holds a Ph.D. in Old Testament from Yale University.

Maria Massi Dakake is an associate professor of religious studies at George Mason University (GMU) in Fairfax, Virginia. She is the director of the undergraduate interdisciplinary Islamic studies program at GMU, and is a founding member and former co-director of the Ali Vural Ak Center for Global Islamic Studies. Her research interests and publications lie in the fields of Islamic intellectual history, with a particular interest in Quranic studies, Shiite and Sufi mystical traditions, and women’s religious experiences. She is co-editor with Daniel Madigan and George Archer of the Routledge Companion to the Qur’an (2021); associate editor and co-author of The Study Qur’an (2015); and author of The Charismatic Community: Shi`ite Identity in Early Islam (2008). She is currently completing a monograph, Toward an Islamic Theory of Religion (forthcoming 2023). She holds a Ph.D. in Near Eastern studies from Princeton University.