Dr. Abdul Hakim Sherman Jackson

Dr. Abdul Hakim Sherman Jackson is associate professor of Islamic Studies, Department of Near Eastern Studies at the University of Michigan. A native of Philadelphia, he received his Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania in Oriental Studies–Islamic Near East in 1991. Presently, he is Professor of Arabic and Islamic Studies, Visiting Professor of Law, and Professor of Afro-American Studies at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. From 1987-89, he served as Executive Director for the Center of Arabic Study Abroad (CASA) in Cairo, Egypt. He has taught at the University of Texas at Austin, Indiana University, as well as Wayne State University; he was recently offered a full-professorship at Stanford University.

In addition to numerous articles on Islamic law, theology and history, and Islam in America, he is author of Islamic Law and the State: The Constitutional Jurisprudence of Shihab al-Din al-Qarafi (E.J. Brill, 1996), On the Boundaries of Theological Tolerance in Islam: Abu Hamid al-Ghazali’s Faysal al-Tafriqa (Oxford, 2002) and, most recently, Islam and the Blackamerican: Looking Towards the Third Resurrection (Oxford, 2005). He is co-founder of the American Learning Institute for Muslims (ALIM), a former member of the Fiqh Council of North America, past president of the Shariah Scholars’ Association of North America (SSANA) and a past trustee of the North American Islamic Trust (NAIT). He is a sought-after speaker and has lectured throughout the U.S.A. and in numerous countries abroad.