Michael Sells is Professor of Religion at Haverford College where he has taught for 17 years in the areas of Islam; Islam and the West; Comparative Religions; Religion and Violence; Islamic and Comparative mysticism, and Middle East love poetry.

Professor Sells is the author of seven books and more than 60 articles. Most recently, he has co-edited and contributed to the forthcoming book The New Crusades: Constructing the Muslim Enemy. This book probes the rise of anti-Islamic sentiment in the West and its relationship to anti-Western anger in the Islamic world, with particular attention to the "clash of civilization" theory that posits an essential and unbridgeable conflict of values between Islam and the West. He is currently completing a book entitled Jihad and Crusade: Religion and Violence after the Cold War.

His 1996 book The Bridge Betrayed: Religion and Genocide in Bosnia received the American Acedemy of Religion prize for the historical study of religion. The book was cited for its analysis of the way myth and ritual can be manipulated to motivate and justify genocide against a religious minority and for its revealing the humanity and hope beneath the violence in Bosnia.

His 1999 book, Approaching the Qur'an, has been praised by Muslim and non-Muslim scholars as a breakthrough in rendering the Qur'an in a way that avoids the confusions and the stiffness of standard translations, in demonstrating the importance of oral recitation in the Islamic tradition, and in showing the relationship of sound and meaning in the Qur'an. He was also consultant and participant in the acclaimed 2001 PBS series Islam: Empire of Faith.

His four books on Arabic love poetry and Islamic mysticism also aim to open up the deeper worlds of Arabic and Islamic culture, the worlds through which religion is humanized and through which cultures and religions can see the human face of one another. Sells has been particularly concerned with the way that major aspects of Islamic culture are not "translated" (in the broad sense of the term) in the Western world. The image of Islam in the West is devoid of the tenderness, warmth, humor, satire, intimacy, and subtlety that constitute a major aspect of Islamic culture. His work on mysticism focuses upon those mystical languages that offer a critique of religious intolerance and an opening onto diversity.

Sells is also an activist. In 1993 he co-founded the Community of Bosnia, a non-profit organization dedicated to resisting religious persecution, racism and genocide, and to working for a tolerant, multireligious society in Bosnia and throughout the world. He has also developed one of the most extensive internet sights on human rights and war-crimes in the Balkans:
http://www.haverford.edu/relg/sells/reports.html

His honors include the Guggenheim, Fulbright, and National Endowment of the Humanities Fellowships, the Columbia Arabic-English Translation Prize, Two American Academy of Religion book awards.

Contact:

Michael A. Sells, Department of Religion, Haverford College, 370 Lancaster Avenue,
Haverford, PA 19041 Phone: 610-896-1027 Fax: 610-896-4926 email: msells@haverford.edu

home page: http://www.haverford.edu/relg/sells/home.html (contains fuller bio, photos, formal CV)