Dr. Daanish Faruqi is a Visiting Researcher at the Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University, Washington, D.C. A scholar of migration and mobility in the Middle East and North Africa, he has leveraged his expertise both in academia and in international development. At Georgetown he researches democracy promotion and conflict resolution through transnational religious humanitarianism. Relying on fieldwork with transnational humanitarian NGOS immediately following the 2023 Syrian/Turkish earthquake, his latest writing deals with the viability of religious humanitarianism in effectively managing refugee crises. He has a forthcoming interview with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace on this project and its potential for peace building.
He completed his Ph.D. from Duke University, where he wrote his dissertation on the role of Syrian Sufi religious scholars in joining the 2011 uprising against Bashar al-Assad. Through several years of ethnographic and historical fieldwork in Morocco, Turkey, and Jordan, conducting hundreds of Arabic-language interviews, his work revealed the role of 19th century migration from North Africa to Damascus in informing contemporary Syrian spiritual and religious politics. Syrian Sufis thus employed distinctly Maghribi idioms of spiritual and political authority to command support in their struggle against both the Assad regime and against the forces of ISIS (Da'esh). Migration and mobility as a theoretical architecture then informed how the ambitions of the Syrian Revolution are maintained in exile, most recently through redirection to humanitarian aid organizations. He has a forthcoming article on this body of research in the Journal of Islamic and Muslim Studies.
He has published two books, Egypt and the Contradictions of Liberalism: Illiberal Intelligentsia and the Future of Egyptian Democracy (profiled in the prestigious New York Review of Books), and From Camp David to Cast Lead: Essays on Israel, Palestine, and the Future of the Peace Process(Lexington Books). He has continued to offer reflections on the challenges of Arab liberalism and democracy, both in a January 2023 essay in the International Journal of Middle East Studies offering updated thoughts on the core thesis of his Egypt book, and in a forthcoming essay for New Lines Magazine. He offers regular commentary in venues like Al Jazeera and Foreign Policy.
Caste discrimination or persecution; Ethnic discrimination or persecution; Journalist persecution; Political persecution; Religious discrimination or persecution; Government/state actor persecution; Religious political activism
Countries of Expertise: Algeria, Egypt, Gaza Strip, Israel, Jordan, Morocco, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, United States, West Bank
The Expert has worked for years with Syrian refugees dispersed in Morocco, Jordan, and Turkey, specifically in the context of their role in joining the uprising against Bashar al-Assad.
Edited Volumes
2017 Dalia F. Fahmy, Daanish Faruqi (ed). Egypt and the Contradictions of Liberalism: Illiberal Intelligentsia and the Future of Egyptian Democracy. London: Oneworld Publications.
2011 Daanish Faruqi (ed). From Camp David to Cast Lead: Essays on Israel, Palestine, and the Future of the Peace Process. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books (2011).
Refereed Journal Articles
“From Dictatorship Syndrome to False Truths: the Political Evolution of ‘Alaa al-Aswany,” International Journal of Middle East Studies, January 27, 2023, https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/international-journal-of-middle…- studies/article/abs/from-dictatorship-syndrome-to-false-truths-the-political- evolution-of-alaa-alaswany/D00E05A9AA58264C060D63F1C1A6DEB8
2012 “After the Sepoy Rebellion: South Asian Sufism and the Reassertion of Indo- Muslim Identity,” Journal of Theta Alpha Kappa (Fall).
2009 “One Step Forward, Five Steps Backwards: The Case for Democracy- Building in Egypt,” Logos: A Journal of Modern Society and Culture vol. 8, issue 1, April.
2008 “A Thorny Legal Matter,” Civil Society and Democratization in the Arab World vol. 16, no. 164, August.
Book Chapters
2017 Daanish Faruqi, Dalia F. Fahmy, “Egyptian liberals, from revolution to counterrevolution,” in Dalia F. Fahmy and Daanish Faruqi (ed.), Egypt and the Contradictions of Liberalism: Illiberal Intelligentsia and the Future of Egyptian Democracy (London: Oneworld Publications, January).
2017 Ahmed Abdel Meguid, Daanish Faruqi, “The Truncated Debate: Egyptian Liberals, Islamists, and Ideological Statism,” in Dalia F. Fahmy and Daanish Faruqi (ed.), Egypt and the Contradictions of Liberalism: Illiberal Intelligentsia and the Future of Egyptian Democracy (London: Oneworld Publications, January).
Conference Proceedings
2018 “Palestinian Refugees under Threat: Towards a Strategic Response” conference, Arab Renaissance for Democracy and Development, Amman Jordan, October 13,14.