Professor Malika Zeghal (Harvard University) presents her new book 'The Making of the Modern Muslim State: Islam and Governance in the Middle East and North Africa', an innovative analysis that traces the continuity of the state’s custodianship of Islam. In The Making of the Modern Muslim State: Islam and Governance in the Middle East and North Africa (Princeton University Press, 2024), Malika Zeghal reframes the role of Islam in modern Middle East governance. Challenging other accounts that claim that Middle Eastern states turned secular in modern times, Zeghal shows instead the continuity of the state’s custodianship of Islam as the preferred religion. Drawing on intellectual, political, and economic history, she traces this custodianship from early forms of constitutional governance in the nineteenth century through post–Arab Spring experiments in democracy. Her detailed and groundbreaking analysis, which spans Tunisia, Morocco, Egypt, Turkey, Syria, and Lebanon, makes clear the deep historical roots of current political divisions over Islam in governance.

Malika Zeghal is the Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Professor in Contemporary Islamic Thought and Life in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations and the Committee on the Study of Religion at Harvard University. She is the author of Gardiens de l’Islam, Les Oulémas d’al-Azhar dans l’Egypte Contemporaine and Islamism in Morocco: Religion, Authoritarianism, and Electoral Politics.

Chaired by Professor Raihan Ismail, H.H. Sheikh Hamad Bin Khalifa Al Thani Professor in Contemporary Islamic Studies.