Dr Safdar Ahmed

PhD & BA Honours (University of Sydney) BFA (National Art School, Sydney)



I completed my PhD at the University of Sydney in 2009. My thesis linked the work of various Muslim reformist thinkers to contemporary paradigms of modernity. This included the study of modernist, Islamist, and contemporary liberal and feminist approaches. Currently, I am interested in studying modern exegetical discourses towards the Quran within recent hermeneutical theories and modes of literary analysis.

Research areas

• Islamic thought in the modern Arab world and northern India
• Contemporary Islamic liberalism and feminism
• Islam within Orientalist and modern Western discourses
• Political Islam, its notions of sovereignty and relationship to nationalism
• Islamic modernism
• Muhammad Iqbal
• Classical and modern Islamic art

Current projects

• Modern hermeneutical theories and interpretations of the Quran
• Modern theories of race and Muslim identity

Selected publications

Books

Complex Modernity: Re-examining Discourses of Islamic Reform, forthcoming 2011

Articles

• “Literary Romanticism and Islamic Modernity: The Case of Urdu Poetry”, forthcoming in South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies.
• 2009, ‘“We are integrating you”: Western Muslims and the Danish Cartoon Controversy’, Art(e)fact Magazine 1, 23.

Areas of teaching

• Postgraduate Course work units: Crisis of democracy in the Arab world; Muslim women: realities and challenges; Current issues in Arab political culture.
• Undergraduate units of study:
  Arabs, Islam and the Middle East: Introduction; Arab-Islamic Civilisation: Introduction; Society and Politics in the Middle East; Issues and debates in Arab culture today, Approaches to Arabic and Islamic Studies.