Asma Afsaruddin

Asma Afsaruddin (born 1958) is an American scholar of Islamic studies and professor in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures at Indiana University in Bloomington.

Biography

Afsaruddin was an associate professor in Arabic and Islamic studies at the University of Notre Dame, Indiana. She previously taught at Harvard University and Johns Hopkins University, from which she received her PhD in 1993. Her fields of specialization include the religious and political thought of Islam, study of the primary Islamic texts (Qur'an and hadith), as well as gender studies.

Awards and honours In 2015, she was presented the Jayezeh Jahani (World Book Prize) for the best new book in Islamic studies by the Iranian president Hassan Rouhani for her book Striving in the Path of God: Jihad and Martyrdom in Islamic Thought. The book was also a runner-up for the British-Kuwaiti Friendship Society Book Prize in 2014. Striving in the Path of God: Jihad and Martyrdom in Islamic Thought (Oxford University Press, 2013) The First Muslims: History and Memory (Oxford: Oneworld Publications, 2008) Excellence and Precedence: Medieval Islamic Discourse on Legitimate Leadership (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 2002) Hermeneutics and Honor: Negotiation of Female "Public" Space in Islamic/ate Societies (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University, 1999) Culture, and Language in the Near East : Essays in Honor of Georg Krotkoff (Eisenbrauns: Winona Lake, Ind., 1997)