Politics, religion, and love: How leo strauss read the arabian nights

Rasoul Namazi's research focus is the comparative study of Islamic and Western political thought. His work has been published in Comparative Political Theory, Review of Politics, Journal of Religion, Perspectives on Political Science, American Political Thought, Iranian Studies, Interpretation, Renaissance & Reformation, and Eurorient as well as several collected volumes.

Namazi’s book titled Leo Strauss and Islamic Political Thought (Cambridge University Press, 2022) is a recepient of the Delba Winthrop Award for Excellence in Political Science. The book is a comprehensive study of Leo Strauss’s writings on Islamic political thought. He is also a co-editor of Leo Strauss on Religion: Writings and Interpretations (SUNY Press, 2024) and is currently working on a book-length manuscript on early Islamic political thought in the Quran.

A laureate of Prix Raymond Aron, Namazi has a Ph.D. in Political Theory from Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris, M.A. in Political Philosophy and Ethics from Université Paris-Sorbonne, M.A. in Political Studies from EHESS, and B.A. in Political Sciences from the University of Tehran Central. Before joining Duke Kunshan University, he was an Alexander von Humboldt Postdoctoral Fellow at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich (2019-2021) and a Postdoctoral Scholar at the Committee on Social Thought, University of Chicago (2016-2018).