The AMI Podcast

Khalil Andani holds a Ph.D in Islamic Studies from Harvard University (Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations) and serves as an Assistant Professor of Religion at Augustana College. Khalil Andani's dissertation, “Revelation in Islam: Qurʾanic, Sunni, and Shiʿi Ismaili Perspectives”, was awarded Best Ph.D. Dissertation of the Year by the Foundation for Iranian Studies in 2020. His first book, based on this dissertation, will be an analytical and historical investigation of Islamic theologies of revelation in the formative and classical periods of Islam, beginning with the Qurʾan and extending through Qurʾanic commentary (tafsīr), Sunni and Shiʿi prophetic tradition (hadith), Sunni theology (kalām), and Shiʿi Ismaili philosophy.

Professor Liyakat Takim is the Sharjah Chair in Global Islam at McMaster University in Canada. A prolific writer and speaker he has authored and/or translated eight books. He is currently working on his ninth book on Qur’anic exegesis. He has also written more than one hundred and forty scholarly works which have been published in various journals, books, and encyclopediae. Professor Takim’s research interests lie in topics such as reformation in Islam, Qur’anic exegesis, the role of custom in shaping Islamic law, Islam in the western diaspora, Islamic fundamentalism, Islamic mystical tradition, Islamophobia, the treatment of women in Islam law and many other topics. His latest book titled Shi'ism Revisited: Ijtihad and Reformation in Contemporary Times was published by Oxford University Press in January 2022. Professor Takim has also spoken at more than one hundred and twenty academic national and international conferences. He has spoken in different parts of the world ranging from Australia, New Zealand, and Singapore, to East Africa, Dubai and North America. Professor Takim has taught at several universities and is actively engaged in dialogue with different faith communities.

Hossam Ouf is currently a research fellow at the Chair of Hadith Studies and Prophetic Tradition at the Center for Islamic Theology in Tübingen, where he researches and teaches Hadith and Sira. He also received his doctorate in 2022 from the University of Tübingen. His dissertation entitled “Hadith Transmission and Confessionality: A Comparative study of “al-Jāmiʿ al-ṣaḥīḥ” of al-Bukhārī (d. 256/870) and “al-Kāfī” of alKulaynī (d. 329/940) in the Sunni and Twelver Shiite hadith sciences.” He completed his master's and bachelor's degree in Islamic Theology in the German language at AlAzhar University in Cairo, Egypt. His master's thesis was also on the topic “The Hadith Criticism of al-Khaṭṭābī (931-998): An Analytical Study of Matn Criticism in the 10th Century A.D./4th Century A.H.” His research interests include Islamic Theological Hadith Research, classical and modern approaches to hadith sciences and the hadith transmission, comparative Hadith research, Sunnis, Shiites, Muʿtazilites, Hadith hermeneutics and hadith exegesis, and classical and modern exegetical approaches to mushkil al-ḥadīth.

Mushegh Asatryan is Associate Professor of Arabic and Muslim Cultures and Director of the Language Research Centre at the University of Calgary (Canada). His research interests include the history of Islamic sectarianism, interreligious debate in the Abbasid empire, esoteric movements in Shiʿism, and Late Antique trends in Islamic thought. His works include Controversies in Formative Shiʿi Islam, the forthcoming study and critical edition of Manhaj al-ʿIlm wa l-Bayān by the Nuṣayrī author ʿIṣmat al-Dawla (co-authored with David Hollenberg), and the forthcoming article “The Emergence of Sunnism: When did the Sunnis Become a Sect?” He is currently working on a book on the culture of debate (munāẓara) in the ʿAbbāsid empire.

Mohammad Ghandehari is a scholar of Islamic studies. He holds a Ph.D. (on Kitāb Sulaym) from the University of Tehran, Department of Qurʾanic and Hadith Studies and is now a research fellow at the University of Religions and Denominations. His primary research interests are Early Hadith, Methodological approaches to the study of Hadith and the conversation of the Qurʾan with the Bible. His publications include “Facing Mirrors: The intertwined golden calf story” (2018). Among the courses he has taught are “The Qurʾan and the Bible” and “Early Shiʿi Hadith.”

Haidar Hobballah completed his PhD in Comparative Religions and Christian Theology at the University of Religions and Denominations in Qom, Iran. Prior to this, he spent several years studying in various seminaries and universities in Qom. He is currently the Head of the Department of Hadith and History and a Senior Lecturer in Islamic Studies at Al-Mahdi Institute in Birmingham, UK. Alongside this, he continues to teach advanced courses (dars khārij) in various disciplines of Islamic Studies. He is the author of two dozen books and numerous articles in the fields of hadith studies, jurisprudence, legal theory, theology, philosophy, and Qurʾanic studies. He is currently working on a book on the history of hadith across different schools of thought.

Gurdofarid Miskinzoda is the Head of the Shiʿi Studies Unit in the Department of Academic Research and Publication at The Institute of Ismaili Studies. She is also the Managing Editor of the Shiʿi Heritage Series. Miskinzoda’s academic background is in the fields of the history of the Near and Middle East and of Islam, Islamic Studies, philology and the study of Arabic and Persian literatures. She is the editor (with Farhad Daftary) of The Study of Shiʿi Islam: History, Theology and Law (London, 2014). Having completed her doctoral studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in 2007, with a dissertation on medieval accounts of the Prophet Muhammad’s life, Miskinzoda joined the Institute of Ismaili Studies as a Research Associate. Most recently in 2019, Miskinzoda completed an MBA in Higher Education Management at the IOE, UCL. Miskinzoda is a Senior Fellow of the Hider Education Academy, UK.

George Warner is a scholar of Islamic studies specialising in Sunni- Shiʿa relations, hadith, ritual, and devotional literature in Arabic and Persian. He has taught at RuhrUniversität Bochum and SOAS University of London, where he completed his PhD in 2017, and is currently based at the University of Exeter in the UK. His first book, ‘The Words of the Imams: al-Shaykh al-Saduq and the Development of Twelver Shi'i Hadith Literature,’ was published in 2021 by I. B. Tauris.

Bekir Kuzudişli is a Professor at Istanbul University in Turkey. He completed his doctorate in 2005 with the thesis title of: “Ḥadīth Narration and Family Isnād”. Kuzudişli is now the Head of the Institute of Islamic Studies. Following his research on hadith narration and asānīd in Shiʿism, his current research interests focus is on asānīd, the history of ḥadīth, Orientalism, and ḥadīth in Shiʿism. Kuzudişli has academic publications in Turkish, Arabic and English. Some of his works include Shiʿa and Ḥadīth, Asbāb īrād al-ḥadīth: Siyāq riwāyāt al-ḥadīth fī-l-qarn alawwal al-hijrī, “Two Different States, Two Shiite Usūl al-Hadīth: Two books written in the Ottoman and Safavid Territories.” “What was the Sunnī Source of al-Shahīd al-Thānī’s Bidāyah: al-Tībī’s al-Khulāṣah or al-Jurjānī’s al-Mukhtaṣar?”, “Relationship Between the Qur’ān and the Sunnah in Shiʿa”, “Sunnī-Shiʿi Interaction in the Early Period – The Transition of the Chains of Ahl al-Sunna to the Shīʿa”.

Ali Rida Rizek (Ph.D., Arabic and Islamic Studies, University of Göttingen 2021) is a scholar of the social and intellectual history of Islam, with a particular focus on Twelver Shiʿism. He received his BA and MA in Arabic Language and Literature from the American University of Beirut (AUB) in Lebanon. He has taught at the American University of Beirut (AUB), the Lebanese American University (LAU), the University of Leiden, the University of Göttingen, and the University of Bayreuth in Germany. His research focuses on the history of Islamic law, Qurʾanic studies, Arabic literature, and classical Islamic education. He has published studies on hadith, legal history, and the classical Islamic ethical discourse. His upcoming book examines, for the first time in a monograph, the life, work, and impact of two early Imāmī legal scholars, namely Ibn Abī ʿAqīl al-ʿUmānī and Ibn al-Junayd al-Iskāfī (both flourishing in the 4th/10th century).