Rev Dr Yazid Said
SENIOR LECTURER IN ISLAM
Theology, Philosophy and Religious Studies
0151 291 3269
saidy@hope.ac.uk
Short Biography
Before arriving at Hope in September 2016, I was a research fellow at Tübingen University. I studied Classical Arabic and English Literature at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, and Christian theology at the University of Cambridge. After being ordained an Anglican priest, I completed my PhD at the University of Cambridge (2010) on the medieval Muslim theologian Abu Hamid al-Ghazali (d. 1111). Subsequently I held a post-doctoral fellowship at McGill University in Canada and the Woods-Gumble fellowship at the Tantur Ecumenical Institute in Jerusalem.
Teaching Specialism
My teaching and research focus on Islam and Muslim-Christian relations. At Hope, I offer courses on Islamic political philosophy, Sufism, Islamic law and society, and on radical Islam today. I contribute to courses on Religion, Conflict and Reconciliation, Religion and Politics in the Israel-Palestine conflict, and on Anglican Christian thought. I also offer teaching for the Master programme in International Relations on Religion and Conflict. In my teaching, I examine diverse Islamic texts looking at the works of Abu Hamid al-Ghazali, Alfarabi, Avicenna, Baqillani and others, with the aim of opening them to sources beyond the frontiers of Islam in order to explore their relevance to contemporary debates. My teaching aims to reflect the significance of ancient texts to current questions, especially with regard to the interaction between religion and politics.
I am happy to to hear from prospective students interested in further research on topics relating to Muslim-Christian studies as well as political theology and philosophy in Islam. Our Subject cluster at Hope provides an excellent basis for an interdisciplinary engagement with topics relating to inter-religious philosophical and theological research.
School/Faculty Roles
I am the course coordinator for first and third/final year students in Religious Studies (BA). I am also the recruitment lead for Theology, Philosophy and Religious Studies. As a member of the university library steering committee, I represent the special collections department of the library. I have wider roles in Church and society: I am a trustee of the William Temple Foundation, a research hub and think tank that that shapes ideas on the impact of religion on civil society, politics and urabn change, where I contribute to blogs and help organise events that engage the wider public and policy makers with the study of theology and interfaith matters. One example of my blogs may be found here: https://williamtemplefoundation.org.uk/the-archbishop-of-canterbury-palestine-and-israel/
As an honorary Canon theologian at Liverpool Cathedral, I support and help organise events involving the wider Liverpool diocese and community with my research interests, especially on current issues in the Middle East and interfaith matters. I am also an honorary assistant priest at Liverpool Parish Church of Our Lady and St Nicholas.
Current and Recent Work
The most recent projects included being guest editor of a special issue with the Journal of Church and State on 'William Temple and the Rebuilding of the Public Square in Post-Pandemic Britain'. This was the fruit of a conference I helped organise at Blackburn Cathedral. In the past two years, I have also been part of a project on Jewish-Christian relations, with a focus on the promise of the land and the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. In addition, my research is focused on two strands: Political theology in Islam and comparative mysticism. The first strand includes the production of a critical edition of an Egyptian Muslim polemical manuscript against Christians and Jews in seventeenth century Ottoman Egypt. The publication seeks to contextualise the MS in relationship to medieval legal and political thought in Islam as well as to examine the intersection of Islamic law, religious and political pluralism with the Egyptian context of the text. The second strand includes articles and chapters that examine the following:
1- Possible roots of Ghazali's concept of 'taste', dhawq, the illuminative fruits of systematic and divinely assisted introspection as the path to knowledge. The project compares similar sentiments found in the biblical commentaries of the Church Fathers on the psalms and in Greek philosophy and attempts to draw implications for comparative religious studies today. 2- Sufi and Christian mystical reflections on the universality and particularity of religious claims from the perspective of the language of interiority and the epiphany of the divine.
Publications and Projects
Books
The Future of Interfaith Dialogue: Muslim Christian Encounters through A Common Word (co-edited with Lejla Demiri). (Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 2018)
Ghazali's Politics in Context. (Routledge: Abingdon, Oxon, 2013).
Special Editions of Journals
"William Temple and the Rebuilding of the Public Square in Post-Pandemic Britain". Journal of Church and State, vol. 65, issue 4, 2023.
Refereed articles and chapters
'Palestinian Voices, God's promise, and the Land', in D'Costa G. et.al (eds.)., Israel: Holy Land, Political Territory or Theological Promise? Jewish-Catholic Engagements? (The Catholic University of America Press: Washington, 2024).
'Naim Ateek and Palestinian Liberation Theology', in Tenatenga, J. & Burns, S. (eds.), Anglican Theology: A Postcolonial Pastiche. (SCM: London, 2024).
'Prayer in Islam and Christianity', in Journal of Modern Believing, 63.3, 2022, pp. 274-281.
'The Coherence of Middle Eastern Societies: Anglican and Islamic political thought', in the International Journal for the Study of the Christian Church, vol. 20 issue 2-3, 2020, pp. 194-213.
Gazali and al-Radd al-gamil: Language, History and Christian Theology. Review essay of Beaumont, Mark & Maha El Kaisy-Friemuth, (ed.), al-Radd al-Jamil - A Fitting Refutation of the Divinity of Jesus Attributed to Abu Hamid al-Ghazali. (Brill: Leiden, 2016). Journal of Intellectual History of the Islamicate World, 8 (2020), pp. 343-361.
'A Common Word and Abu Hamid al-Ghazali's Love of God', in Said, Y. & Demiri, L., The Future of Interfaith Dialogue: Muslim Christian Encounters through A Common Word. (Cambridge University Press: Cambridge)< pp. 289-307.
'Anglican', in Ross, K. & Tadros, M & Johnson Todd (eds.), Edinburgh Companion to global Christianity: Christianity in North Africa and West Asia. (Edinburgh University Press: Edinburgh, 2018), pp. 219-226.
'Ali al-Munayyar, Enlightening the ignorant about the faith of the Jews with whom God is ignorant and of the Christians who have gone astray', in Muslim-Christian Relations: Primary Sources 1500-1700. (Bloomsbury: London, 2023), pp. 442-446.
'Edward Said, Religion and the Study of Islam: an Anglican View', in Journal for the Academic Study of Religion, 26: 2, 2013, pp. 123-138.
'Knowledge as Fiqh in the Political Theology of al-Gazali', in Kirby, T & Bas, R., (eds.), Philosophy and Abrahamic Religions. (Cambridge Scholars: Cambridge, 2013), pp. 225-236.
Said, Y., 'Religion and global justice 0 Islam0, an entry in the Encyclopaedia of Global Justice.
Reviews
Jarel Robinson-Brown, Black Gay British Christian Queer (London: SCM Press, 2021): https://williamtemplefoundation.org.uk/black-gay-british-christian-queer/
Anver M. Emon & Rumee Ahmed, The Oxford Handbook of Islamic Law (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2018), in the Journal of the Ecclesiastical Society, Vol. 22, issue 2, (2020), pp. 256-258.
Ayesha, Chaudhry, Domestic Violence and the Islamic Tradition. (Oxford University Press: Oxford, 2013), in Journal of the Ecclesiastical Law Society, Vol. 22, issue 3, (2016) pp. 383-385.
Benham Sadeghi, The Logic of Law Making in Islam: Women and Prayer in the Legal Tradition. (Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 2013), in the Journal of Ecclesiastical Law Society, Vol. 18, issue 2 (2016), pp. 234-237.
Maoz Asher, Israel as a Jewish and Democratic State. (The Jewish Law Association, 2011), in the Journal of Ecclesiastical Law Society Journal, Vol. 16, issue 2, (2014), pp. 240-243. Jerome Murphy O'Conner, Keys to Jerusalem: Collected Essays, (Oxford University Press: Oxford, 2012), in Theology, 116. 3 (2013), pp. 228-229.
Ebrahim Moosa, Ghazali and the Poetics of the Imagination. (University of North Caroline Press: Chapel Hill, 2008), in The Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, Vol 18, issue 2, pp. 226-228.