Raihan Ismail
Affiliation:
Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies | St. Antony's College
Biography:
Raihan Ismail is the His Highness Sheikh Hamad Bin Khalifa Al-Thani Professor of Contemporary Islamic Studies. She was elected as a Corresponding Fellow to the Australian Academy of the Humanities in 2024.
Raihan’s research interests include Political Islam, intra-Muslim relations, and the intertwining nature of religion and politics in the Middle East. She convenes the Contemporary Islamic Studies program at the Middle East Centre, St Antony’s College.
Before moving to Oxford, Raihan was based at the Australian National University, teaching courses on Islam, the Modern Middle East, intra-Muslim relations, Gender and Culture in the Middle East, and Muslim Politics. She was the co-recipient of the 2018 Max Crawford Medal, awarded by the Australian Academy of the Humanities for ‘outstanding achievement in the humanities by an early-career scholar’. She also delivered the 8th Hancock Lecture for the Academy, titled “Hybrid Civilisation or the Clash of Civilisations: Rethinking the Muslim Other.”
From 2019 to 2022, Raihan was an Australian Research Council Fellow (DECRA). She was the Goldman Faculty Leave Fellow at Brandeis University for the 2022-2023 academic year.
Raihan has been the co-convenor (2015-2018) and convenor (2019-2020) of the Political Islam seminar series for various Australian Commonwealth government agencies. She has also delivered consultancies for the Australian Attorney General’s Department and Departments of Defence and Foreign Affairs.
She is a regular commentator in international media on Islam and Middle East politics. She shares her research expertise on various media outlets, and has given numerous interviews including on Voice of America, BBC World, BBC Arabic, ABC TV and ABC Radio National. She has appeared as a panellist on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s Q&A program. In 2019, she was placed in the ABC’s Top 5 Media Residency Program for humanities scholars in Australia.
She is the author of Saudi Clerics and Shia Islam (Oxford University Press, 2016) and Rethinking Salafism: The Transnational Networks of Salafi ‘Ulama in Egypt, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia (Oxford University Press, 2021). Rethinking Salafism is the 2024 winner of the UK’s Muslim World Book Award.
She has a Bachelors Degree in Political Science, with a minor in Islamic Studies, and a Masters in International Relations from the International Islamic University of Malaysia, and a PhD from the ANU.
Research Interests:
- Muslim politics
- Clerical networks
- Religious institutions and governance
- Islamic Studies
Current Projects:
Islamists in Exile
Courses:
For the M.Phil in Modern Middle East Studies
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Political Islam, Islamism and Modern Islamic Movements
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Modern Islamic Thought
Recent Publications:
Books:
- Ismail, R 2021, Rethinking Salafism: The Transnational Networks of Salafi ‘Ulama in Egypt, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia, Oxford University Press, New York.
- Ismail, R 2016, Saudi Clerics and Shi‘a Islam, Oxford University Press, New York.
Articles:
- Ismail, R 2023, ‘Al-Azhar and the Salafis in Egypt: Contestation of Two Traditions’, The Muslim World Journal. https://doi.org/10.1111/muwo.12455
- Ismail, R 2019, ‘Reclaiming Saudi Salafism: The Saudi Religious Circles and the Threat of ISIS’, Journal of Arabian Studies, vol, no. 2, pp. 164-181.
- Ismail, R 2016, ‘The Saudi ‘Ulama and the Syrian Civil War’, in Amin Saikal (ed.), The Arab World and Iran: A Turbulent Region in Transition, Palgrave Macmillan, New York, pp. 83-102.
