I am a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at the School of Divinity at the University of Edinburgh and a scholar of Religious Studies with a focus on contemporary Islam and interdisciplinary expertise in the sociology and anthropology of religion. My research comprises the study of the transformative impact of ‘crisis’ on meaning-making practices of Muslim communities, ethical formations, ritual performance, and ultimately burgeoning selfhoods. I employ an ethnographic approach, anchored in extensive fieldwork, to explore the structural dynamics between state violence and political theology. Central to this exploration is the understanding of how Muslims navigate tribulation and human suffering and adapt their ritual practices – in the broader contexts of secular modernity, political violence, and carcerality – and reconcile them with God, authority, and doctrine. I have sought to understand this within the milieu of Anglo-American Muslim communities – with a focus on the rise of neo-traditionalist and counter-modernist orientations therein – and in the context of expanding modern carceral regimes and confinement – with a focus on carceral practices in the Middle East.

My first book, Neo-traditionalism in Islam in the West: Orthodoxy, Spirituality, and Politics was published in July 2023 by Edinburgh University Press. This book examines the intellectual, theological, and political commitments of an emerging trend within Anglo-American Islam that emphasizes the primacy of a notion of 'tradition' and sees a moral and political imperative in its resurrection. While my first book project examines the broader themes of crisis – whether it is personal, political, or even ‘civilizational’ – to Anglo-American Muslim communities seeking voluntary spiritual discipline and retreat, my second book studies the impact of coercive discipline in carceral spaces on the theodical, ethical, and ritual understandings and practices of prisoners. When Only God Can See: The Faith of Muslim Political Prisoners – co-written with Asim Qureshi and forthcoming with Pluto Press in April 2024 – examines the ritual practices (prayer, ablution, fasting), study circles, Qur’anic introspection, theodicy, dreams and ethereal beliefs, as well as modes of resistance of prisoners incarcerated in Guantanamo Bay, US black sites (such as the prison in Kandahar), and Egypt.