Expertise

Islamic studies in relation to science, scripture, education, history, and politics

Biography

Mahan Mirza serves as executive director of the Rafat and Zoreen Ansari Institute for Global Engagement with Religion  in the Keough School of Global Affairs at the University of Notre Dame. He also is a teaching professor in the Keough School.

An Islamic studies scholar, Mirza previously served as lead faculty member for the Madrasa Discourses, a project to advance scientific and theological literacy administered by the Keough School’s Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies. He also served as dean of faculty at Zaytuna College in Berkeley, California, America’s first accredited Muslim liberal arts college.

Mirza holds a B.S. in mechanical engineering from University of Texas Austin, an M.A. from Hartford Seminary in Islamic Studies and Christian-Muslim Relations, and a Ph.D. in religious studies from Yale University. He has taught a range of courses in Arabic-Islamic studies, western religions, history of science, and global affairs, along with foundational subjects in the liberal arts including logic, rhetoric, ethics and politics. His doctoral research was on the intellectual world of al-Biruni, an 11th-century scientist from Central Asia.

Mirza has edited two special issues of The Muslim World and served as assistant editor of The Princeton Encyclopedia of Islamic Political Thought. His op-eds have appeared in The Conversation and The Hill. Recent articles include “Deed over idea: toward a shared caliphate” in The Routledge Handbook for Religious Literacy, Pluralism, and Global Engagement (2022) and “Between tyranny and anarchy: Islam, COVID-19, and public policy in Religions (2023), and “Divine command and religious liberty: a theological reflection on Islamic constitutionalism” in Islam, Religious Liberty and Constitutionalism in Europe (2024).

For the 2024-2025 acadenic year, Mirza also is serving as the visiting vice president for academic affairs at American Islamic College in Chicago.

Recent Work

• Between tyranny and anarchy: Islam, COVID-19, and public policy (Religions)

Courses

• Engaging World Religions (undergraduate elective for Asian studies, global affairs, peace studies)
• Islam and Global Affairs (master of global affairs elective)
• The World As It Should Be (undergraduate elective in global affairs)