Dr. Sarah Eltantawi is a scholar of contemporary Islam.  She is Associate Professor of Modern Islam at Fordham University in New York City.  Her work focuses on contemporary Islam and Islamic law, especially in the context of post-coloniality and authoritarianism. Her work so far has concentrated on Nigeria and Egypt. Dr. Eltantawi’s book, Shari’ah on Trial:  Northern Nigeria’s Islamic Revolution (University of California Press, 2017), examines why Northern Nigerians took to the streets starting in 1999 to demand the re-implimentation of sharia law.  Her current book project Resist then Replace: The Political Theology of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt analyzes historical, theological, and political reasons for the revolt against the Muslim Brotherhood government in Egypt in 2013. She has also published on issues ranging from early Shi’ite jurisprudence to perceptions of “post-modernity” in Nigeria to the revolution in Egypt.  Her upcoming monograph analyzes the influence of Pan Arabism, Pan Africanism and their collaboration in the Muslim-majority world.

Dr. Eltantawi earned her PhD in the Study of Religion from Harvard University, where she was the Jennifer W. Oppenheimer Fellow and Fellow at Harvard Kennedy School; an MA in Middle Eastern Studies from Harvard; and a BA in English and Rhetoric from the University of California, Berkeley. She has academic fellowships at Brandeis University, UC Berkeley, and at the Forum Transregionalle at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin as well as the Freie Universität in Berlin, and has been a Visiting Professor at the American University in Cairo.

Dr. Eltantawi frequently comments on Middle East and North African and African affairs, as well as Islam in America, on national and international media.