John Esposito
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John Louis Esposito (born 19 May 1940, Brooklyn, New York City) is a professor of International Affairs and Islamic Studies at Georgetown University.
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[edit] Early life
Esposito was raised a Catholic in an Italian neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York City, and spent a decade in a Catholic monastery. After taking his first degree he worked as a management consultant and high-school teacher. He then studied for a masters in theology at St Johns University. He earned a PhD at Temple University, Pennsylvania in 1974, studying Islam for the first time.
[edit] Academic career
For nearly twenty years after completing his PhD, Esposito had taught religious studies (including Hinduism, Buddhism and Islam) at the College of the Holy Cross, a Jesuit college in Massachusetts. He published Islam and Politics in 1984, and Islam: The Straight Path in 1988; both books sold well, going through many editions. In 1988, he was elected president of the Middle East Studies Association of North America (MESA).
He served as a member of the Board of Directors of the Center for the Study of Islam & Democracy from 1999 to 2004.[1] He is editor-in-chief of The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Modern Islamic World, The Oxford History of Islam, The Oxford Dictionary of Islam, and Oxford’s The Islamic World: Past and Present. He is the founding director of Georgetown’s Prince Waleed bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding, and has served as president of MESA and of the American Council for the Study of Islamic Societies.
The center at Georgetown University directed by Dr Esposito is the recipient of a $20,000,000 endowment from Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal of Saudi Arabia to promote Muslim-Christian dialogue.[2]
[edit] Criticism
According to Martin Kramer, Esposito "would have remained obscure even by the standards of Middle Eastern studies" had it not been for the publication of Edward Said's Orientalism. Said's book created demand for "for sympathetic texts on Islam — pitched lower than Orientalism, uncontaminated by anti-Americanisms, preferably even written by an American," and the rise of Esposito's popularity was solely due to his meeting the above criteria.[3]
Esposito has been criticized by the organization Campus Watch as an apologist for militant Islam. In this vein, they take special issue with statements he has made about Islamist groups like Hamas.[4]
[edit] Published works
- Unholy War: Terror in the Name of Islam
- What Everyone Needs to Know About Islam
- The Islamic Threat: Myth or Reality?
- Turkish Islam and the Secular State (with H. Yavuz)
- Islam and Politics
- Islam: The Straight Path
- Modernizing Islam (with F. Burgat)
- Islam and Democracy (with John Voll)
- Makers of Contemporary Islam (with John Voll)
- Political Islam: Radicalism, Revolution or Reform?
- Iran at the Crossroads (with R.K.Ramazani)
- Islam, Gender and Social Change (with Yvonne Haddad)
- Women in Muslim Family Law
[edit] References
- ^ http://www.islam-democracy.org/esposito_bio.asp
- ^ http://explore.georgetown.edu/news/?ID=3762 - Georgetown University: Press Release
- ^ Kramer, Martin (2001) Islam Obscured. Chapter 3 from Ivory Towers on Sand: The Failure of Middle Eastern Studies in America, pp. 44–60. Washington: The Washington Institute for Near East Policy. URL accessed on November 20, 2006.
- ^ http://www.frontpagemag.com/articles/Printable.asp?ID=2651
[edit] External links
- John Esposito's Homepage
- Islam and Democracy, Article by John Esposito
- Political Islam: Beyond the Green Menace, Article by John Esposito
- John Esposito dicusses his new book, Unholy War, at the Carnegie Council.
Interviews
