Rachel Scott

Ph.D. in Islamic Studies at the University of London, 2004.

Rachel Scott is Assistant Professor of Islamic Studies in the Religious Studies Program within the Department of Interdisciplinary Studies. Professor Scott currently teaches courses on “Judaism, Christianity, and Islam,” “Islam,” and “Islam and the Modern World.” She also teaches a course on “Islamic Political Thought” for the graduate program called ASPECT (Alliance for Social, Political, Ethical, and Cultural Thought). Her research interests include modern Islamic thought, with a focus on contemporary Islamic thinking on citizenship, and, more recently, religious authority and the relationship between “religion” and “state.” She received her Ph.D. in Islamic Studies from SOAS (School of Oriental and African Studies) at the University of London (2004), and her M.Phil. in Modern Middle Eastern Studies and her B.A. in Arabic and Islamic Studies from the University of Oxford. She is an active member of the Middle Eastern Studies Association and the American Academy of Religion, for which she is currently co-chair of the regional “Islam” section. Professor Scott is currently preparing her dissertation for publication as a book, provisionally entitled Non-Muslims and the Islamic State: The Challenge of Political Islam.

Representative Publications:

“The Role of the Ulama in an ‘Islamic Order’: The Early Thought of Muhammad al-Ghazali,” Maghreb Review, forthcoming in December 2007.

“Contextual Citizenship in Modern Islamic Thought,” Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations, Vol. 18, No. 1 (January 2007), pp. 1-18.

“An ‘Official’ Islamic Response to the Egyptian al-Jihad Movement,” The Journal of Political Ideologies, Vol. 8, No. 1 (February 2003), pp. 39-61.

“Education and Arabism in Damascus at the Turn of the Twentieth Century,” Islamic Culture, Vol. 72, No. 3 (July 1998), pp. 17-64.