DISC Faculty

Ebrahim Moosa
Associate Professor of Islamic Studies

Ebrahim Moosa

Office Location: 118C Gray Building
Office Phone: (919) 660-3520
Email Address: moosa@duke.edu

Specialties:
Islam
Culture

Education:
PhD, University of Cape Town, 1995

Research Categories: Law, Moral Philosophy, Ethics, and Critical Islamic Thought

Research Description: Ebrahim E.I. Moosa is Associate Professor of 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. Professor 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 till 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, Muslim Self Renewed: Text, Tradition and Technology and working on another book, titled, Between Right and Wrong: Debating Muslim Ethics. 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 generating 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 please visit Dr Moosa’s website: www.ebrahimmoosa.com

Teaching (Fall 2009):

  • RELIGION 49S.02, First-year seminar (top)
    Perkins 2-065, MW 02:50 PM-04:05 PM
  • RELIGION 254.01, Justice/law/commer islam
    See instru, Tu 02:50 PM-05:40 PM
  • LAW 568.01, Justice/law/commer islam
    Law school 4047, Tu 03:00 PM-05:40 PM

Recent Publications   (More Publications)

  1. E. Moosa, Colonialism and Islamic Law, in Islam and Modernity: Key Issues and Debates, edited by Muhammad Khalid Masud, Armando Salvatore & Martin van Bruinessen (Submitted, 2009), Edinburgh University Press .
  2. E. Moosa, Between Principle and Pragmatism: Genealogies of Constitutionalism in Muslim Minority Politics, in Islam and Constitutionalism, edited by Sohail Hashmi & Houchang Chehabi (Submitted, Fall, 2008), Harvard University Press .
  3. with Aaron L. Mackler, Allen Verhey, Anne Carolyn Klein & Kurt Peters, Spiritual and Religious Concepts of Nature, in Altering Naure: Concepts of 'Nature' and the 'Natural' in Biotechnology Debates, edited by Lustig, B.A., Brody, B.A., McKenny, G.P., vol. 97 no. 1 (2008), pp. 13-62, Springer .
  4. E. Moosa, Social Change, in The Islamic World (Routledge Worlds), edited by Andrew Rippin (2008), pp. 565-575 .
  5. E. Moosa, Shariat Governance in Colonial and Post Colonial India, in Islam in South Asia in Practice, edited by Barbara Metcalf (Submitted, 2008), Princeton University Press .

Curriculum Vitae

Current Ph.D. Students   (Former Students)

  • Mashal Saif  
  • SherAli Tareen  
  • Youshaa Patel  
  • Michael B. Wilson