Introduction
Fuad S. Naeem is Assistant Professor of Comparative Theology and Director of the Encountering Islam Initiative at the University of St. Thomas. He has previously taught at Gustavus Adolphus College, Williams College, and Georgetown University, where he also worked at the Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding. Dr. Naeem has published on a range of topics, including ‘ulama in modern Islam, Hindu-Muslim engagement and conflict in South Asia, Muslim satirical poetry under colonialism, the struggle between tradition and modernity in Islam and Islamic philosophy — in journals such as the Journal of the American Academy of Religions, Religions, Muslim World, Islamic Studies, and Islamic Intellectual Traditions.
Dr. Naeem has given numerous conference presentations and public lectures relating to Islam and Muslims and has engaged widely in interreligious dialogue. He is currently working on a book manuscript on the reshaping of classical Islamic intellectual traditions in modern South Asia. The manuscript focuses on the influential religious scholars and theologians Muhammad Qasim Nanautvi (d. 1880, co-founder of the prominent school of Deoband, who debated Christian missionaries, Hindu reformers, and Muslim modernists and developed a rational theology to articulate Islamic teachings in the modern world), and Ashraf ‘Ali Thanvi (d. 1943, who critiqued modern thought and practices from a classical Islamic philosophical and theological perspective and refashioned Islamic spirituality and Sufism for the modern Muslim practitioner).
Naeem has lived in Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and the United States — for many years on the East Coast and more recently in Minnesota. He enjoys traveling to sacred and natural sites, meditating, hiking, film, folk and world music, cooking and cricket.