Dr Abdallah Rothman
Programme Lead, Islamic Psychology Diploma
Dr Abdallah Rothman holds an MA in Psychology from Antioch University and a PhD in Psychology from Kingston University London. His clinical practice as well as his academic research focus on approaching counselling and psychotherapy from within an Islamic paradigm and establishing an indigenous Islamic theoretical orientation to human psychology that is grounded in the knowledge of the soul from the Islamic tradition. In addition to his academic training he has studied privately with a number of traditional Islamic scholars throughout the Muslim world. Dr Abdallah is visiting professor of psychology at Zaim University Istanbul, International Islamic University Islamabad, and Al-Neelain University Khartoum and co-founder, along with Professor Malik Badri, of the International Association of Islamic Psychology.
Dr Ramon Harvey
Programme Lead, Research
Dr Ramon Harvey lectures in Islamic theology at Cambridge Muslim College. He undertook his postgraduate studies at SOAS, University of London, and also holds an ʿalimiyya qualification. His publications include monographs and articles in both Islamic theology and Qur’anic studies. Currently, his research focuses on kalām in early Māturīdism and on constructive Islamic theology, especially in conversation with Christian theology, analytic philosophy and phenomenology. He is Series Editor of Edinburgh Studies in Islamic Scripture and Theology, which is published by Edinburgh University Press.
Dr Salman Younas
Programme Lead, BA (Hons) Islamic Studies
Dr Salman Younas’ research focuses on Islamic law in the classical and modern periods. Dr Younas graduated from Stony Brook University with a degree in Political Science and Religious Studies. After completing his undergraduate degree, he moved to the Middle East where he spent half a decade studying Arabic and the traditional Islamic sciences. In 2013, Dr Younas completed his MA in Oriental Studies from the University of Oxford with honours. He then went on to complete a DPhil in Oriental Studies from the University of Oxford in 2018. He was previously a researcher at the Oxford Department of International Development and the Hamad bin Jassim Fellow at the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies.
Dr Aaminah Patel
Programme Lead, Arabic
Dr Aaminah Patel is a Teaching Fellow in Arabic at Cambridge Muslim College. She has over a decade of experience in teaching and studying Arabic and the Islamic sciences; she received her training in Arabic in Jordan and Mauritania, as well as at institutes in the UK. Her research focuses on the story of Adam in classical tafsir, exploring how exegetes reconcile the theological tension between prophetic infallibility and the common narrative of Adam ‘sinning’ or ‘falling from grace.’ Her work offers a nuanced perspective on the reconciliation of these concepts within Islamic intellectual history. Aaminah’s research interests include Prophethood in Islam, Sufi themes in Shakespearean tragedy, Shi’i and Sunni theological perspectives on infallibility, and the development of Qur’anic exegesis.
Professor Yasin Dutton
Senior Research Fellow
Professor Yasin Dutton is Emeritus Professor of Arabic Studies at the School of Languages and Literatures, University of Cape Town, South Africa. His specialist interests are the early development of Islamic law (particularly the school of Imam Malik), and the early development of the various readings (qir’a’at) of the Qur’an. His publications include The Origins of Islamic Law: The Qur’an, the Muwatta’ and Madinan ‘Amal (Curzon Press, 1999), Original Islam: Malik and the Madhhab of Madina (Routledge, 2007), and Early Islam in Medina: Malik and His Muwatta’ (Bloomsbury Academic, 2022), as well as numerous articles on early Islamic law, early Qur’anic manuscripts, and the application of Islamic law in the modern world, particularly in relation to economic and environmental issues. He is currently researching on the Diwan (collected poems) of the 9th/15th century Egyptian Sufi master, Ali Wafa al-Iskandari, as well as certain other early Shadhili texts.
Dr Claire Gallien
Senior Research Fellow
Professor Claire Gallien is Senior Research Fellow at Cambridge Muslim College. She received her PhD in English and Comparative Literatures and Studies at the Sorbonne. She also has training in Arabic and Islamic Studies from the Inalco and abroad (Cairo, Damascus, Sanaa, Birzeit, Beirut, and Tunis). Prior to joining Cambridge Muslim College, she was research and teaching fellow at the Zentrum für Islamische Theologie (Tübingen University, Germany) and has had more than ten years experience of teaching and research at the University of Montpellier and the CNRS (France). Her research interests are in Islamic epistemology and Islamic intellectual and religious history, Islamic literature and Sufism, British early-modern orientalism, with a focus on the constitution of Islamic manuscript libraries in early-modern Britain, decolonial thinking and translation. She has studied with Muslim scholars in Egypt, Turkey and the UK.
Dr Belal Alabbas
Lecturer, Islamic Studies
Dr Belal Alabbas is a historian of Islamic intellectual and legal thought (7th – 15th centuries) and his research focuses on the hadith corpus, hermeneutics, and Islamic law in the formative and classical periods. He graduated from Al-Azhar University with a degree in religious studies and completed his DPhil in History of the Islamicate World at the University of Oxford. He previously held lectureships at the University of Nottingham and the University of Bristol and was a British Academy International Fellow at the University of Exeter.
Dr Engy Moussa
Early Career Researcher
Dr Engy Moussa is Early Career Researcher at Cambridge Muslim College. She is also James Buchanan Fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University and a Bye-Fellow at Hughes Hall College at the University of Cambridge. She received her PhD in Politics and International Studies from the University of Cambridge, and earned the Alimiyyah Degree in Arabic and Islamic Studies with distinction from Cambridge Islamic College. She is also a graduate of the Diploma in Contextual Islamic Studies and Leadership from Cambridge Muslim College. Her research interests include Islamic governance and politics, social and political movements, authoritarian rule, and critical security studies. Prior to joining Cambridge Muslim College, she was senior teaching associate at the Department of Politics and International Studies at the University of Cambridge.
Visiting Lecturers
Dr Samir Mahmoud
Dr. Samir Mahmoud is currently Academic Director of Usul Academy. Recently he was Assistant Professor at the Lebanese American University. He has a BA (Hons) in Anthropology & Politics with a focus on multicultural theory and comparative religion, and an MA in Architectural History, Theory & Urban Design with a focus on the traditional townscape from the University of New South Wales, Sydney Australia. He also holds an MPhil in Theology & Religious Studies with a focus on comparative philosophy and aesthetics. He completed a PhD in Islamic Studies from the University of Cambridge.
Muhammad Husain Kazi
Visiting Lecturer
Muhammad Husain Kazi is a visiting lecturer at the Cambridge Muslim College where he teaches the Quranic Studies module. Muhammad serves as a Community Imam and Liaison Officer at Ashford and Staines Community Centre and is reading for a PhD in Theology and Religious Studies at the University of Cambridge. He is particularly interested in the theme of the Prophet’s exemplariness and the complex interplay between the temporal and timeless dimensions of the Qur’an. Muhammad completed an MSt at Oxford, an MA at SOAS, has spent more than a decade studying the Islamic sciences with traditional scholars in the UK and Jordan, and has also memorised the Noble Qur’an.
Dr Sohail Hanif
Associated Lecturer
Sohail Hanif works on Islamic legal theory, with a focus on the Ḥanafī school of law. He received a MA and DPhil from the University of Oxford. His doctoral thesis, A Theory of Early Classical Ḥanafism: Legal Epistemology in the Hidāyah of Burhān al-Dīn ‘Alī ibn Abī Bakr al-Marghīnānī (d. 593/1197), studies the interplay of rationality and tradition in a major work of legal commentary. Sohail has also spent over a decade in Jordan where he studied a full curriculum of Islamic sciences with traditional ‘ulamā’. He was previously Head of Arabic Sciences at Qasid Arabic institute in Amman, an instructor in Islamic studies at Qibla online academy, and has taught undergraduate classes on Modern Islam and Qur’anic studies at the University of Oxford. He has also served as Head of Research and Development at the National Zakat Foundation.
