CLS Fellows

Ahmed al-Rahim (Ph.D., Yale University) is a visiting CLS Fellow and an assistant professor at the University of Virginia, where he teaches Islamic studies in the Department of Religious Studies.  His work centers mainly on the medieval intellectual traditions of Islamic civilization (particularly the transmission of Arabo-Islamic philosophy, medieval biography, and virtue ethics). Dr. al-Rahim is currently working on a monograph, titled Political Islam: Medieval Theology, Modern Ideology, which examines the ways in which elements of medieval Islamic law, theology, and history are—often through historical memory—fused with the modern (post-Napoleonic invasion of Egypt in 1798) ideological programs of political Islam; among which are those of modern Salafism, the Muslim Brotherhood, political Shi'ism, and most recently Jihadi-Salafism. His publications include “Whither Political Islam after the ‘Arab Spring’,” The Hedgehog Review: Critical Reflections on Contemporary Culture 13.3 (2011): 8-22; “Inside Iraq’s Confessional Politics,” and “The Sistani Factor,” Journal of Democracy 19.1, 16.3 (2005, 2008): 170-174, 50-53, respectively; and The Creation of Philosophical Tradition: Biography and the Reception of Avicenna's Philosophy from the 11th to the 14th Centuries C.E. (forthcoming in the series “Diskurse der Arabistik,” Wiesbaden: O. Harrassowitz, 2013).