I am a scholar working comparatively on Shia Islamic and Jewish political and legal thought. Currently, I serve as senior fellow at the Indiana University-Bloomington's Center for the Study of the Middle East (CSME), where I lead a research and convening project titled "Shia Islamic and Jewish Legal Reasoning in Dialogue." I came to CSME following a term as Iran Policy Fellow at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies (Fall 2021) and as Visiting Faculty in the IU Borns Jewish Studies program (2020-2021). I was also the Reitman Visiting Professor of Jewish Studies at Rutgers in the Spring term of 2023.

Mys dissertation "Theocracy in Shia Islam and Judaism: Studies in Legal Theology " was completed at the Friedrich-Alexander University of Erlangen-Nuremberg. The dissertation addresses the conceptual and historical underpinnings of theocratic thought in both Shia Islam and Judaism, and attempts by modern thinkers to theologically problematize and unwind theocratic syntheses that meld mysticism, law, philosophy and politics for the sake of human autonomy. I examined key thinkers in the Jewish tradition such as Judah Halevi, Rav Kook, Leo Strauss, Franz Rosenzweig and Menachem Lorberbaum, along with figures inspired by Shia political thought such as Mohamed Shabestari, Abdolkarim Soroush, Ayatollah Khomeini, Henri Corbin and Fazlur Rahman. The medieval theology of Judah Halevi’s Kuzari, which appropriates concepts from Shiism to form the core elements of its political theology, provides a philological basis for the endeavor. My next research project attempts to hermeneutically and dialogically understand the Iranian-Israeli conflict as an epistemic clash between modern Israeli-Jewish and Iranian-Shia postcolonial constitutional identities. My research has been supported by both a Fulbright fellowship and the German Academic Exchange (DAAD) doctoral fellowship.

Open Access Dissertation:

 

"Theocracy in Shia Islam and Judaism: Studies in Legal Theology."

https://opus4.kobv.de/opus4-fau/frontdoor/index/index/docId/18920

 

Articles:

“Modern Jewish and Shia Islamic Political Theosophy: An Elective Affinity?" Religions. 14:76 (2023). Special Issue on "Modern Jewish Religious Thought" edited by Paul Mendes-Flohr.

“Systematic Existence Philosophy and the Problem of Autonomy: Franz Rosenzweig and the Contemporary Interpreters of Mullah Sadra in Dialogue” in Ibn Sina and Mullah Sadra: On the Rediscovery of Aristotle and the School of Isfahan. Freiburg/Munich: Alber, 2022.

“Retrieving the Foundations and Future of Islamic Modernism: Fazlur Rahman and Mohammed Shabestari on Hermeneutics, Prophetic Epistemology, and the Modern Islamic State” in Philosophical Hermeneutics and Islamic Thought. Callmieri, S. Varmick, S. eds. Berlin: Springer Press. 2022.

“Living the Truth of a Free Europe: Community, Philosophy, and Responsibility in the Thought of Franz Rosenzweig and Walter Benjamin.” in The Rosenzweig Jahrbuch 3: The Idea of Europe.“ ed. Braser, M. Freiburg/München: Alber, 2008.

Iranian political and legal thought. Shia theology. Modern and medieval Jewish political and legal thought.

Senior Fellow, Indiana University-Bloomington