Jaan Islam (MA)
Thesis title: Jaan Islam: Divine Sovereignty in Jihadi-Salafist Thought: An Intellectual Genealogy, 1975-2015.
PhD in Islamic Studies and Christian-Muslim Relations
Year of study: 3
Contact details
- Web: Academia.edu
PhD supervisors:
Address
- Street
-
School of Divinity,
Mound Place - City
- Edinburgh
- Post code
- EH1 2LX
Background
Jaan Islam is a PhD Candidate of Islamic Studies and AHRC Doctoral Fellow. Jaan completed his MA in Political Science before coming to Edinburgh to study Salafī-Jihadism and decolonial political thought. He is a co-author of a forthcoming volume on Ibn Taymiyya's political writings entitled Islam and the State in Ibn Taymiyya: Translation and Analysis (Routledge, 2022).
Research Summary: My dissertation examines the concept of divine sovereignty in Jihadi-Salafism through a study of four of its major proponents. In the subfield of Jihadi-Salafism, scholars have argued that the notion of ‘divine sovereignty’ is a modern abstraction with little connection to the premodern Islamic tradition. Against this narrative, my thesis argues that divine sovereignty in Jihadi-Salafism is, rather, fundamentally embedded in mainstream, premodern Islamic jurisprudence (fiqh) and theology. In the form of an intellectual genealogical study, I show how conceptions related to divine sovereignty, such as caliphate and sovereignty (ḥākimiyya), have origins in a diverse range of premodern Islamic traditions.
Qualifications
BA - Political Science and Religious Studies, Dalhousie University
MA - Political Science (Theory), University of British Columbia
Responsibilities & affiliations
Events Officer (Trustee)- British Association for Islamic Studies
Tutor - School of Divinity
Undergraduate teaching
Tutor
Jews and Muslims (Semester II-2020/2021)
God(s) of the Philosophers (Semester I-2021/2022)
Religion, Violence, and Peacebuilding (Semester II-2021/2022)
Research summary
Jaan's PhD thesis is an intellectual genealogy of Jihadi-Salafi jurists and their conception of divine sovereignty (hakimiyya). His interests include Islamic intellectual history, Islamic law (fiqh al-siyasa, maqasid al-shari'a), decolonial political thought and Muslim identity in the West.
Knowledge exchange
Jaan S. Islam and Adem Eryiğit, Islam and the State in Ibn Taymiyya: Translation and Analysis (London: Routledge, 2022).
Jaan S. Islam, "The Contention Between Secular and Revealed Law: Analyzing Ibn Rushd's Solution to the Problem of the “Virtuous Society”." Journal of Islamic and Muslim Studies 4, no. 1 (2019): 43-65.
Affiliated research centres
Current project grants
Arts and Humanities Research Council Studentship (UK) (2021-)
Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Scholarship (Canada) (2019-2021)
Invited speaker
"The Portrayal of Salafī-Jihadism: The Production of Knowledge in Fabricating a Global Enemy" Symposium: Notions of Jihad Reconsidered: Perspectives on Media, Materiality, and Political Violence, University of Mainz, 6-8 October 2021
Papers delivered
"The Myth of ‘Salafi-Jihadism’: A Critique of the Western-centric Narrative," The Study of Islam and Muslims in the shadow of the “War on Terror”: Complexity, Reflexivity and Decolonising Methodologies, Alwaleed Bin Talal Centre for the Study of Islam, University of Edinburgh.