Ebrahim Moosa

Ebrahim Moosa
moosa@duke.edu
919-660-3520
118C Gray Building
Box 90964
Durham, NC 27708

Ebrahim E.I. Moosa is Professor of Religion and Islamic Studies in the Department of Religion. His interests span both classical and modern Islamic thought with a special focus on Islamic law, history, ethics and theology. Moosa is the author of Ghazali and the Poetics of Imagination, winner of the American Academy of Religion’s Best First Book in the History of Religions (2006) and editor of the last manuscript of the late Professor Fazlur Rahman,Revival and Reform in Islam: A Study of Islamic Fundamentalism. He was named Carnegie Scholar in 2005 to pursue research on the madrasas, Islamic seminaries of South Asia.

Born in South Africa, Dr. Moosa earned his MA (1989) and PhD (1995) from the University of Cape Town. Prior to that he took the `alimiyya degree in Islamic and Arabic studies from Darul Ulum Nadwatul `Ulama, one of India’s foremost Islamic seminaries in the city of Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh. He also has a BA degree from Kanpur University, and a postgraduate diploma in journalism from the City University in London. Previously he taught at the University of Cape Town’s Department of Religious Studies in South Africa until 1998 and was visiting professor at Stanford University (1998-2001) prior to joining Duke University. As a journalist he wrote for Arabia: The Islamic World Review, MEED (Middle East Economic Digest) and Afkar/Inquiry magazines in Britain, and later became political writer for the Cape Times in South Africa. He contributes regularly to the op-ed pages of the New York Times,Atlanta-Journal Constitution, The Boston Review and several international publications and is frequently invited to comment on global Islamic affairs.

Currently he is completing a book titled What is a Madrasa? Also under construction are two books on ethics: Muslim Self Revived: Ethics, Rights and Technology after Empire and another title, Between Right and Wrong: Debating Muslim Ethics (Wiley). In these writings Moosa explores some of the major challenges that confront a tradition-in-the making like Islam, in a rapidly changing world. Moosa examines the way religious traditions encounter modernity and in the process generate new conceptions of history, culture and ethics. Dr. Moosa serves on several distinguished international advisory boards and is associated with some of the foremost thinkers, activists and role-players in the Muslim world and beyond. He advised the first independent South African government after apartheid on Islamic affairs and serves on committees of the Organization of Islamic Conference in addition to others. He also has extensive experience in human rights activities. He has received grants from the Ford Foundation to research contemporary Muslim ethics and issues of philanthropy in the Muslim world. For further details and access to research materials may be found on Moosa’s personal website.