Asma Afsaruddin is Chair of the Department of Near Eastern Languages & Cultures and a professor of Islamic Studies at Indiana University, Bloomington. She received her PhD in Middle Eastern Studies from the Johns Hopkins University in 1993. She specializes in the religious and political thought of Islam, Qur’an and hadīth, Islamic intellectual history, and gender. She was named a Carnegie Scholar in 2005 and is the author of seven books, including Excellence and Precedence: Medieval Islamic Discourse on Legitimate Leadership (Brill, 2002); Striving in the Path of God: Jihad and Martyrdom in Islamic Thought (Oxford University Press, 2013) and Contemporary Issues in Islam (Edinburgh University Press, 2015).
