Jawad Qureshi
Associate Professor
Biography
Email: jqureshi@zaytuna.edu
Office hours: By appointment
Dr. Jawad Qureshi is a scholar of Islamic studies with field specialties in Religious Studies Theory and Method, Islamic Revival and Reform, Islamic Theological and Philosophical Thought, Sufism, and Qur’anic Studies. At Zaytuna College, he has taught graduate courses in Arabic Logic, Theology 1, Theology 2, Theology 3, and Research Methods in Islamic Studies.
Dr. Qureshi received his BA in Religious Studies from the University of Missouri-Columbia in 1999 and his MA in Religion from the University of Georgia-Athens in 2002. In 2019, Dr. Qureshi received his PhD in Islamic Studies from the University of Chicago Divinity School. Prior to his post at Zaytuna College, he taught at the American Islamic College (2014–2018).
Dr. Qureshi’s PhD thesis, titled “Sunni Tradition in an Age of Revival and Reform: Said Ramadan al-Buti (1929–2013) and His Interlocutors,” is an account of counterreformation within Sunni teachings in the twentieth century, focusing on the religious field of twentieth-century Damascus, Syria, and the life and career of its most prominent Sunni scholar, Shaykh Saʿīd Ramaḍān al-Būṭī (1929–2013).
Dr. Qureshi is fluent in Arabic and can read Urdu and French.
Dr. Qureshi joined Zaytuna College in 2018.
Education
- University of Chicago Divinity School, PhD, Islamic Studies, 2019
- University of Georgia-Athens, MA, Religion, 2002
- University of Missouri-Columbia, BA, Religious Studies 1999
Journal Articles
- “Being Bi-Lingual: Thoughts on the Insider/Outsider Problem in Teaching Islam.” Muslim World 108, no. 2 (2018): 214–217.
- Translated into Arabic: “Khitabat ‘ulama’ al-sunna al-Dimashqiyyin khilal thawra 2011,” translated by Umnia Jameel al-Mirsad 46 (2018): 11–46.
- “Ring Composition in Surat Yusuf (Q 12).” Journal of the International Qur’anic Studies Association 2 (2017): 149–167. Winner of the first annual Andrew Rippin Best Paper Prize.
Books
- “Reform.” In The Wiley Blackwell Concise Companion to the Hadith, edited by Daniel W. Brown, 297–312. London: Wiley-Blackwell, 2020.
- “Ibn ʿArabi and the Akbari Tradition.” In Routledge Handbook of Sufism, edited by Lloyd Ridgeon. London: Routledge, 2020.
- “Some of ʿAbd al-Ghani al-Nabulusi’s Kalām Writings.” In ʿAbd al-Ghanī al-Nābulusī and His Network of Scholarship (Studies and Texts), edited by Lejla Demiri and Samuela Paganini, 59–72. Berlin: Mohr Siebeck, 2019.
- “The Discourses of the Damascene Sunni Ulama during the 2011 Revolution.” In State and Islam in Baathist Syria: Confrontation or Co-optation? St. Andrews Papers on Contemporary Syria, 59–91. Scotland: University of St. Andrews Centre for Syrian Studies, 2012.
- “Buti, Saʿid Ramadan”; “Nawawi, Muhyiddin”; “Nass.” The [Oxford] Encyclopedia of Islam and Law.
- “Nadwi, Abu al-Hasan ʿAli.” The Oxford Encyclopedia of Islam and Politics.
- Sunni Scholasticism in an Age of Revival and Reform: Said Ramadan al-Buti (1929–2013) and His Interlocutors. In progress.
- Three Treatises of Abu ‘Abd al-Rahman al-Sulami (d. 412/1021) on the Sufi Path. In progress.
Working Papers
“Abd al-Ghani al-Nabulusi’s (d. 1731) Commentary on Seven Verses of Ibn al-Farid’s Wine Ode.” Mohr Siebeck. Forthcoming.
Lectures, talks, and other speaking engagements
- “Nabulusi’s Lumʿat al-nur al-muḍīʾa sharh al-abyat al-sabʿa al-Fariḍiyya: Cosmology in Ibn al-Fariḍ’s Khamriyya.” Old Texts, New Readings: Exegesis and Creativity in Early Modern Islamic Theology, Center for Islamic Theology, University of Tübingen, August 2019.
- “Countering Reform: Sunni Traditionalism Against Modernist Salafis On Law And Ethics.” Islamic Philosophy Conference, Harvard University, April 2019.
- “Reform, Print, and Memory: Forgetting and Remembering Najm al-Din al-Tufi (d. 1316) in 20th Century Islamic Legal Reform.” American Academy of Religion Annual Conference, Religion, Memory, History Unit, November 2018.
- “Said Ramadan al-Buti (1929–2013) on Jihad and the Baathist State.” Political Theology: Promise and Prospects, University of Chicago Divinity School, November 2018.
- “Respondent. Sharia and the Secular.” SoCal Graduate Student Conference on Islamic Studies, October 2018.
- “Critiquing Islamist Violence: Theorizing Non-Violence and Re-Thinking Jihad in the Thought of Jawdat Said (b. 1931) and Said Ramadan al-Buti (d. 2013).” Middle East and Islamic Studies (MAMEIS) Annual Conference, April 2018.
- “Did Sulami Plagiarize Sarraj? A. J. Arberry’s Question Re-Visited.” American Oriental Society Annual Conference, March 2017.
- “Ring Composition, Virtues, and Qur’anic Prophetology in Surat Yusuf (Q 12).” International Qur’anic Studies Association Annual Meeting, November 2016.
- “Zuhayr al-Shawish (1925–2013) and al-Maktab al-Islami: Print, Hadith Verification, and Authenticated Islam.” American Academy of Religion, Contemporary Islam Group Panel on “Salafism, a Growing Islamic Movement: Formation, Expansion, and Self-Critique,” November 2016.
- “Semitic Rhetoric and the Qur’an: The Ring Structure of Surat Yusuf (Q 12).” 30th Annual Middle East History and Theory, University of Chicago, May 2015.
- “The Fairest of Stories: Structure, Virtues, and the Spiritual Path in Surat Yusuf (Q 12).” Howard Divinity School, Contemplating the Qur’an (Tadabbur al-Qur’an): The Qur’an and the Reading of History, April 2015.
- “The Exoteric Esotericist: Ibn al-‘Arabi’s Legal Theory and his al-Futuhat al-Makkiyya.” American Oriental Society Annual Conference, March 2015.
- “Countering Reform: Saʿid Ramadan al-Bouti (1929–2013) and the Parameters of Maslaha.” Reformers and Intellectual Reformulation in Contemporary Islam, School of Oriental and African Studies and Queen Mary University, January 2015.
- “Some of ʿAbd al-Ghani al-Nabulusi’s Kalam Writings.” University of Tübingen Early Modern Trends in Islamic Theology ‘Abd al-Ghanī al-Nābulusī and His Network of Scholarship, Centerfor Islamic Theology, September 2014.
- “Tools of the Islamic Ethico-Legal Tradition.” University of Chicago Initiative on Islam and Medicine, Mapping Out an Islamic Bioethics: An Intensive Workshop, August 2014.
- “Ibn al-ʿArabi’s Fusus al-hikam in the Deobandi maslak: Ashraf ʿAli Thanawi’s al-Hall al-aqwam li ‘aqd Fusus al-hikam.” Annual Conference on South Asia, Center for South Asia at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Panel on “Continuities and Ruptures of Colonial Modernity in South Asian Islam,” October 2013
- “The Discourses of Damascene Sunni ‘Ulama Concerning the Syrian Revolution.” Syria in a Changing World, Centre for Syrian Studies, University of St. Andrews, September 2011.
- “Abul Hasan Ali Nadwi’s Essay Political Interpretation of Islam: A Sunni Religious Scholar’s Critique of Islamist Conceptions of Religion.” Panel on “Contemporary ‘Ulama: Approaches to Reform, Critique, and Dialogue.” American Academy of Religion Annual Conference, November 2008.