Simon Wolfgang Fuchs

My work as an intellectual historian specializes in the 20th and 21st century with a particular focus on global Islam and Shi’ism. I am interested in how the Islamic scholarly tradition is debated and negotiated in modern and contemporary Muslim societies. My research revolves around the travel of ideas between West, Central, and South Asia. I focus on religious authority, sectarianism, Islamic political thought, the Islamic schools of law, and the relationship of Islam and science. Fieldwork over the last couple of years has led me to Egypt, Pakistan, India, Iran, Iraq, Tunisia, and Lebanon. My work draws on materials in Urdu, Persian, and Arabic.

Together with Thomas Pierret (eds), Utopianism in the Middle East and North Africa (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2025)

In a Pure Muslim Land. Shiʿism between Pakistan and the Middle East (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2019), Islamic Networks and Muslim Civilization Series.

“The ‘Discovery’ of Modern Islam in East Germany after 1979: Iran, the Resurgence of Religion, and the Coming Crisis of Dependent Capitalism” forthcoming in Die Welt des Islam (2025, Advance Articles), 1-36, https://doi.org/10.1163/15700607-20250007, available open access

“A Direct Flight to Revolution: Maududi, Divine Sovereignty, and the 1979-Moment in Iran”, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 32, 2 (2022): 333-354, available Open Access

“Searching for Friends Across the Global South: Classified Documents, Iran, and the Export of the Revolution in 1983,” in Rasmus Christian Elling and Sune Haugbølle (eds.), Iran, Palestine, 1979, 1982: The Fate of Third Worldism in the Middle East (London: Oneworld, 2024), 70-95.

- Global Islam
- Transnational Connections
- Shi'i Islam
- The Iranian Revolution
- Islamism

Associate Professor of Islam in South Asia and the Middle East, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem