Our Team

Dr. Emad El-Din Shahin is Dean of the College of Islamic Studies (CIS) at Hamad Bin Khalifa University (HBKU). Before joining CIS, he held the Hasib Sabbagh Distinguished Visiting Chair of Arabic and Islamic Studies and was a visiting professor of political science at the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. He has taught in leading universities in the United States including Harvard, Notre Dame, Georgetown, George Washington, and Boston Universities. His research and teaching interests focus on Islam and politics, comparative politics, democracy, and political reform in Muslim societies. Dr. Shahin has authored, co-authored, and co-edited six books and has more than 50 scholarly publications including journal articles, book chapters, and encyclopedia entries. His publications include Political Ascent: Contemporary Islamic Movements in North Africa (1998), co-editorship with Nathan Brown of The Struggle over Democracy in the Middle East and North Africa (2010), and co-authorship of Islam and Democracy (2005 in Arabic). He was the Editor-in-Chief of The Oxford Encyclopedia of Islam and Politics (2014), and he co-edited with John L. Esposito The Oxford Handbook of Islam and Politics (2013). Previously, Shahin was Interim Provost at HBKU (2019 – 2021), a distinguished visiting scholar at Columbia University (2014 – 2015), and a public policy scholar at The Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars (2014).

Dr Chauki Lazhar is the Deputy Director of the Research Center for Islamic Legislation and Ethics (CILE) at Hamad Bin Khalifa University (HBKU), Qatar. He is also lecturer at the College of Islamic Studies (CIS) at the same university. Chauki Lazhar holds a Ph.D. in Islamic Law and Theology from the University of Aberdeen in the United Kingdom, a M.A. in Islamic Law and Jurisprudence from the European Institute of Human Sciences in Paris and a B.A in Islamic Law and Theology from the European Institute of Human Sciences in Château Chinon, where he also memorized the entire Qurʾan. He was Lecturer in Islamic Studies at Group T, International University College Leuven, Belgium. Dr Lazhar has taught a wide range of courses in Dutch, Arabic, English and French, including; Islamic law, theology, Qurʾanic exegeses (tafsīr), principles of Islamic law and jurisprudence (uṣūl al-fiqh), the purposes of Islamic law (maqāṣid al Sharīʿa) and Qurʾan and Hadith studies. His research interests in the field of Islamic studies include Islamic meta-ethics and metaphysics, the epistemology of Islamic sciences, Islamic worldview studies and the methodology of contemporary ethico-religious reasoning (ijtihād). The College of Islamic Studies (CIS) recently awarded him a grant to lead a research project on contemporary trends in the development of “Islamic Religious Philosophy”. Chauki Lazhar is the author of four books and ten peer-reviewed articles. He is currently working on two manuscripts of two books, which are to be published soon: 1. Vicegerency (Istikhlāf) in Islamic Thought and Scripture: Towards a Qurʾanic Theory of Human Existential Function, and 2. The Contemporary Critique of Religio-Ethical Reasoning (Ijtihād) and Islamic Sciences: Towards a Benchmark.

Mawahib Abubakr’s research interests are ethics and gender, nationalism, transnationalism and feminism.   She holds a PhD in Women’s, Gender and Feminist Studies from York University, Toronto; an MA in Development Studies from the Institute of Social Studies, The Netherlands; and a BA (Hons) in political science from University of Khartoum, Republic of Sudan.  She has also studied community development and community capacity building at the Institute in Management and Community Development at Concordia University, Montreal, Canada. During her studies she was successful in winning several academic awards and grants, such as the African Fellowship at the American University in Cairo; the Ethel Armstrong Award in Women’s Studies, York University; and a grant from Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA).  Mawahib has worked as teaching and research staff at the Department of Political Science, University of Khartoum and York University and with extensive experience of administration and community development in Khartoum, Toronto and Doha she joined CILE in 2013 as Business Support Manager responsible for administrative and financial operations. As a Research Associate, she conducts the field of Islam, Gender and Ethics.

Dr. Mohammed Ghaly is Professor of Islam and Biomedical Ethics at the Research Center for Islamic Legislation & Ethics (CILE) at Hamad Bin Khalifa University. He has a BA in Islamic Studies from Al-Azhar University (Egypt) and MA and PhD in the same specialization from Leiden University (the Netherlands). During the period 2007-2013, Ghaly was a faculty member at Leiden University. Since 2011, Ghaly has been a faculty member at the Erasmus Mundus Program; the European Master of Bioethics, jointly organized by a number of European universities. Ghaly is the founding Editor-in-Chief of the peer-reviewed Journal of Islamic Ethics (published by Brill). He was the founding program coordinator of the newly established MA in Applied Islamic Ethics and chaired the committee responsible for establishing this pioneer program.

Dr. Ray Jureidini is Professor of Migration Ethics and Human Rights at the MA Program in Applied Islamic Ethics at the College of Islamic Studies (CIS) and the Research Center for Islamic Legislation & Ethics (CILE). In the 1990s, he co-founded and served as Vice Chairman of the Australian Arabic Council established to counter anti-Arab racism in Australia. He was also the founder and Editor of the Journal of Arabic, Islamic, and Middle East Studies. After teaching sociology at five universities in Australia, he spent six years at the American University of Beirut, where he began researching and publishing on abuses of the human rights of migrant domestic workers in Lebanon. At the American University in Cairo, he became Director of the Center for Migration and Refugee Studies and conducted a number of research projects on migrant and refugee issues. Between 2011 and 2014, he returned to Lebanon and worked at the Institute for Migration Studies at the Lebanese American University. In 2012, he served for one year as a consultant to the Migrant Worker Welfare Initiative at Qatar Foundation (QF), contributing to the QF Standards for Migrant Worker Welfare for contractors and sub-contractors and completing a report on labor recruitment into Qatar.

To see his podcast videos, click here.

Dr. Mutaz Al Khatib is Associate Professor of Islamic Moral Philosophy, and the coordinator of the MA Program in Applied Islamic Ethics at the College of Islamic Studies (CIS) and the Research Center for Islamic Legislation & Ethics (CILE). He was a visiting fellow at Zentrum Moderner Orien (ZMO) in Berlin (2006), and a visiting scholar at the Forum Transregional Studien, Berlin (2013-2012). Al-Khatib was a visiting lecturer at the American University of Beirut, the Islamic University of Beirut, and Qatar University. He has delivered lectures and participated in conferences at Oxford University, University of Cambridge, Princeton University, Florida University, Berkeley School of Law, Tubingen University, University of Ludwig-Maximilians, Osnabruck University, and other universities worldwide. He is an editorial board member of the Journal of Islamic Ethics and the book series Studies in Islamic Ethics both published by Brill. He is Principal Investigator (PI) of a large-scale project on genomics and Islamic ethics funded by the Qatar National Research Fund (QNRF). Al Khatib is the author of The Textual Critical Approach to Ḥadīth: a Study of the Methods of Traditionalists and Jurists (Beirut: Arab Network for Studies and Publishing, 2011), and The Justified Violence: Shari’a versus the People and the State (Cairo: Dar Almashriq, 2017). He also edited several books and published over 30 academic articles in Arabic and English, some published by Brill and Oxford.

Graduated from Northwestern University in Qatar on 2014, with a bachelor of science in Communications and Media Studies. Rawan has also obtained a certificate in Public Relations. She has always worked in academic places such as Northwestern University, Doha institute for Graduate Studies and has been working for CILE since July 2017.

Graduated from College of the North Atlantic-Qatar on June 2010 as an Internet Applications Developer. She worked at Qatar Foundation’s Board Management Office between May 2011 until October 2013 as a System Support Officer. Mona Joined CILE as an Events coordinator on November 2013.