Waseem El-Rayes

Associate Professor

• Associate Professor

• Faculty

• Case Hall Room S306
• 842 Chestnut Rd
• East Lansing, MI 48825
• 517-884-1268
• elrayes@msu.edu

BIOGRAPHY

Waseem El-Rayes is Associate Professor of Political Theory and Constitutional Democracy at James Madison College, Michigan State University. He specializes in political philosophy with a focus on ancient Greek and medieval Islamic political thought, including the work of Plato, Aristotle, al-Farabi, Ibn Sina (Avicenna), al-Ghazali, Ibn Bajja (Avempace), Ibn Tufayl, Ibn Rushd (Averroes), and Ibn Khaldun. His research examines the contrast between ancient-medieval and modern thought with respect to the problem of political legitimacy as well as the relationship between piety and politics. His articles have appeared in Arabic Sciences and Philosophy, Mélanges de l’Université Saint-Joseph, Interpretation: A Journal of Political Philosophy, Religious Studies and Theology, and The Encyclopedia of Islam and the Muslim World. He is now completing a book entitled Against the Politics of Forever: Ibn Khaldun and the Science of Culture. The work is an interpretive analysis of Ibn Khaldun’s science of culture as it is articulated in his Kitab al-‘Ibar in general and its Muqaddima in particular.