I am currently writing my doctoral thesis on Sufism in Saudi Arabia since 1979. In my work I explore texts, scholarly genealogies, practices and communities in the context of Saudi state religious policies that deemed Sufism deviant, and alien to Islam. I am interested in the study of Sufism in Saudi Arabia through the prism of the relationship between establishment Wahhabi dogma, and state power; how state sponsored religious institutions are employed to censor practices, police communities, and prosecute scholars. I seek to explore how religiously marginalized communities like the Sufis negotiate their presence in the spaces where the state at times enforces, at times resists, and at times attenuates the application of Wahhabi dogma.
Before coming to Berlin I lived and worked for over five years in Saudi Arabia. Prior to that, I received a BA in International Studies and History from City College of New York, and a MA in Near East Studies from New York University.
Selected Publications:
‘In the Path of the Ancestors: The Ba ‘Alawi Sufi Order and the Struggle for Shaping the Future of Islam.’ in Global Sufism: Boundaries, Structures, and Politics, Mark Sedgwick and Francesco Piraino eds., (London: Hurst, 2019).
‘Albania’, in European Islamophobia Report 2016, Enes Bayrakli and Farid Hafez eds., (Istanbul: SETA, 2017)
‘The Return of Islam in South East Europe: Debating Islam and Islamic Practices of Family Law in Albania and Kosovo.’ in Applying Sharia in the West. Maurits S. Berger ed., (Leiden: Leiden University Press, 2013).
