Welcome Distinguished Fellow, Professor Samy Ayoub

The Bech-Loughlin First Amendment Center is thrilled to announce that Professor Samy Ayoub is joining us as a Distinguished Fellow. Professor Ayoub is one of the leading scholars in the world in Islamic law, modern Middle East law, and law and religion in contemporary Muslim societies. He focuses on issues concerning the interaction between religion and law, and the role of religion in contemporary legal and socio-political systems within a global comparative perspective. He has pursued training in both law and Islamic Studies in Egypt, Scotland, and in the United States. 

Dr. Ayoub teaches Comparative Middle East Law and Law and Religion in the Modern Middle East at Texas Law and is widely published. In addition to his scholarly articles, he is the author of Law, Empire, and the Sultan: Ottoman Imperial Authority and Late Ḥanafī Jurisprudence (Oxford University Press, 2020), a book based on his dissertation which won the 2015 Malcolm H. Kerr Dissertation Award. This book investigates authoritative Ḥanafī legal works from the Ottoman world of the 16th – 19th centuries CE, casting new light on the understudied late Ḥanafī jurists (al-mutaʾakhkhirūn). His next book, Erasure: Law and Legal Modernity in Colonial Egypt, 1800-1950, a study of state regulation of legal practice in Egypt from 1800-1950, is scheduled for release in 2025. 

Dr. Ayoub earned his PhD in Islamic law from the School of Middle Eastern and North African Studies and the James E. Rogers College of Law at the University of Arizona. He earned a BA in Islamic jurisprudence from Al-Azhar University in Cairo, Egypt, in 2006, where he received systematic instruction in Ḥanafī jurisprudence. He also received an MSc. in Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies from the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, UK, in 2008.

The Center is delighted to welcome Dr. Ayoub as a Distinguished Fellow! We look forward to working with him and benefitting from his exceptional knowledge and insight.