Editorials

Introductory Note
It is a great honor to introduce myself as the new Co-Editor of the American 
Journal of Islam and Society. Developing the future of this journal is a con-
siderable intellectual trust that I can only envisage as a collective effort to be 
undertaken with the journal’s excellent editorial team. Under Dr. Ovamir 
Anjum’s editorial leadership in the last few years, the journal established 
a very successful trajectory, combining high academic quality and timely 
treatment of topics of interest to diverse communities of readers. 

In this introductory note, I would like to begin by expressing my com-
mitment to the vision behind the recent name change from the American 
Journal of Islamic Social Sciences to the American Journal of Islam and So-
ciety. The new name captures the multidisciplinarity of the journal’s cur-
rent content. This multidisciplinarity is reflected too in the editorial team’s 
varied areas of expertise, to which I bring my primary academic interest in 
Qur’anic and tafsīr studies; my work and experiences in developing Islamic 
Studies as a subject in its own right in Britain, which led to my involve-
ment in founding and launching the British Association for Islamic Studies 
(BRAIS); and my more recent work on Islam and Muslims in Britain. Some 
common threads run across these different academic interests and activ-
ities, but one mode in which they have significantly intersected for me is 
through questions of gender, both conceptually and institutionally. It is this 
last aspect of my work that I am keen to draw upon as Co-Editor of the 
journal. 

Building on the achievements of the current editorial team, I see pub-
lishing research on Islam, gender, and sexuality to be an important and 
strategic area of growth. Scholarship on related topics has exponentially 
expanded both in quantity and quality. However, a great deal of current 
research is clustered around narrowly defined approaches and goals, the 
mapping of which remains a future task. Suffice it to say here that central to 



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my vision is to see the journal become a platform for rigorous gender-fo-
cused research which critically pursues as well as challenges the intellectual 
agendas and societal concerns on which the study of gender and Islam has 
turned until today. 

This intellectual dimension I see as concomitant with structural chang-
es that allow broader and less siloed representation of women academics in 
the study of Islam and Muslims. One of my main goals is to work with the 
editorial team to formulate editorial policies and strategies which lend sup-
port to early-career female researchers and facilitate intellectual mentoring 
through reviewing processes. 

Finally, I would like to thank all those who have supported the journal 
throughout the years and helped build it up into a strong publication. I 
look forward to working with you and to receiving manuscript submis-
sions from scholars across the multitude of fields which study Islam and 
Muslims.

Shuruq Naguib, Co-Editor, American Journal of Islam and Society
Lecturer, Department of Philosophy, Politics, and Religion

Lancaster University, Lancaster, UK