Sherman A. Jackson continues the Week Nine Interfaith Lecture Series theme of “All Rise: Save Us and Look Beyond” at 2 p.m. today in the Hall of Philosophy.
Jackson is the King Faisal Chair of Islamic Thought and Culture at the University of Southern California, where he’s also Distinguished Professor of Religion, professor of American studies and ethnicity, and director of the Center for Islamic Thought, Culture and Practice.
At USC, his research interests begin in classical Islamic Studies, including law, theology and intellectual history, and extend to placing this legacy in conversation with the realities of modern Islam in the West, most especially Muslim communities in America.
“This implicates issues of race, immigration, liberalism, democracy, religion in the modern world, pluralism, constitutionalism, Muslim radicalism and related areas of inquiry, again, all in conversation with the classical and post-classical legacies of Islam,” Jackson wrote in his USC staff bio.
Jackson’s work as a scholar and intellectual is uniquely devoted to placing the classical Islamic intellectual, religious, and spiritual tradition into robust and meaningful conversation with the challenges and opportunities confronting Muslims in the modern world and he’s authored numerous articles on various aspects of Islamic law, theology, history and Islam and Muslims in modern America.
One of the founding scholars of the American Learning Institute for Muslims, Jackson is considered one of the top 10 experts on Islam in American by Religion Newswriters Foundation’s ReligionLink. He’s been named several times, most recently in 2023, one of the top 500 most influential Muslims in the world by the Royal Islamic Strategic Studies Center in Amman, Jordan, and the Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding.
He is author of Islamic Law and the State: The Constitutional Jurisprudence of Shihāb al-Dīn al-Qarāfī; On the Boundaries of Theological Tolerance in Islam: Abū Hāmid al-Ghazālī’s Fayşal al-Tafriqa; Islam and the Blackamerican: Looking Towards the Third Resurrection; Islam and the Problem of Black Suffering; Sufism for Non-Sufis: Ibn ‘Aţā’ Allāh al-Sakandarī’s Tāj al-‘Arūs; and Initiative to Stop the Violence: Sadat’s Assassins and the Renunciation of Political Violence. His latest publication is The Islamic Secular, published by Oxford University Press in 2024.
Among his proudest moments, however, was the eulogy he delivered at the funeral of the legendary American Muslim, Muhammad Ali.
