Building Bridges Seminar

Youshaa Patel is an associate professor of religious studies at Lafayette College. His scholarship explores how Islam has shaped—and been shaped—by Muslim interfaith encounters in the Middle East and beyond. He is author of The Muslim Difference: Defining the Line between Believers and Unbelievers from Early Islam to the Present (2022), which was named a finalist for two American Academy of Religion book awards: “Best First Book in the History of Religions” and “Award for Excellence in the Study of Religion, Textual Studies.” His work has been supported by grants from Mellon, Fulbright, and the American Institute of Yemeni Studies, and includes extended research stays in India, Qatar, Yemen, Jordan, and Syria. Recently, Patel was the Abdul Aziz Al-Mutawa visiting fellow at the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies, an independent center of the University of Oxford. He holds a Ph.D. from Duke University.