From 2019-2020 I was a fellow in Religion and Culture at the Center for the Study of Religion. My work during that fellowship focused on religious reform, specifically on the ways South Asian Muslim modernists deployed unique hermeneutic strategies to complicate the hierarchy of religiously authoritative sources as evidenced by their citation practices. For example, I analyzed the use of Persian poetry (including Rumi’s Masnavi) alongside hadith (sayings of the Prophet Muhammad) in debates about Islamic law. I then drew connections between those citational practices and the author’s approach to scriptural interpretation.
scholar of religion
Rebecca L. Faulkner 