Congratulations to Prof. Rasoul Namazi who has won The Delba Winthrop Award for Excellence in Political Science for his book titled “Leo Strauss and Islamic Political Thought” (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022).
In his book, Rasoul Namazi offers the first in-depth study of Leo Strauss’s writings on Islamic political thought. Concentrating on Strauss’s thought, the influential German-American thinker and one of the most original political philosophers of the twentieth century, Namazi’s volume focuses on several important studies by Strauss on Islamic thought. He critically analyzes Strauss’s engagement with two prominent classical Muslim thinkers, Alfarabi and Averroes, and discusses Strauss’s interest in the famous work of Islamic literature, the Thousand and One Nights. A result of work on the Leo Strauss Archive kept at the University of Chicago, the book discusses the relationship between Strauss’s contribution to the study of political thought in Islam and the work of other prominent scholars in the field. Also including previously unpublished material from Strauss’s papers, this book provides new insights into Strauss’s reflections on religion, philosophy, and politics and their relationship to persecution, divine law, and unbelief in the works of key Muslim thinkers. This work presents Strauss as one of the most innovative historians and scholars of Islamic thought of all time.
Rasoul Namazi
Assistant Professor of Political Theory
Duke Kunshan University
His research focus is the comparative study of Islamic and Western political thought. His work has been published in various journals and several collected volumes. Namazi’s book titled Leo Strauss and Islamic Political Thought (Cambridge University Press, 2022) is a comprehensive study of Leo Strauss’s writings on Islamic political thought. He is currently editing a volume titled Leo Strauss on Religion: Writings and Interpretations (Forthcoming with SUNY Press) and working on a book-length manuscript on early Islamic political thought.
