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Dr. Harun Spevack

Affiliated Adjunct Assistant Professor
harun.spevack@bostonislamicseminary.org
60 Willow Street Chelsea, MA 02150

Education

  • Ph.D., Arabic and Islamic Intellectual History, Boston University
  • B.A., Humanities/Humanistic Studies, Harvard University

Dr. Harun Spevack

Affiliated Adjunct Assistant Professor

Biography

Dr. Harun Spevack specializes in Islamic Intellectual History, with an emphasis on 13th-19th-century law, theology, and Sufism and their reception in contemporary Muslim communities. He has published two books and a number of articles on Islamic intellectual history including The Archetypal Sunni Scholar: Law, Theology, and Mysticism in the Synthesis of al-Bajuri (SUNY, 2014.)

He is also a Visiting Scholar in Harvard’s Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, and teaches courses on Islam, Islamic Finance, and World Religions in Harvard’s Division of Continuing Education. Previously, he has been a visiting researcher in Harvard Law School’s Program in Islamic Law where he worked on Talfiq (legal patch-working) in Inheritance, Divorce, and Islamic Finance.

Dr. Harun also serves as Muslim Chaplain and as a Senior Research Associate at Brandeis University where he heads a three-year research project on Islamic Philosophy; included in this project is the founding of the American Society of Islamic Philosophy and Theology.
 
He serves as Editor in Chief of the Journal of Islamic Philosophy and has published a number of books and articles on topics in Islamic law, theology, logic, and Sufism. Prior to his academic career he taught Music Theory at Ai New England Institute of Art, Arabic at Boston University, and private musical instrumental and ensemble lessons at Music Maker Studios (Brighton, MA) and Buckingham, Brown, and Nichols high school (Cambridge, MA.)
He is also a founder and director of Boston’s Bukhari Institute, which, since 2001, has offered educational programs on the arts and sciences of the Islamic world.
 

Courses

Archived Courses
  • The Vocabulary of Islamic Studies, Ramadan 2021
  • Sciences of Fiqh, ‘Aqidah and Tazkiyya, Islamic Foundation Virtual Courses (Ramadan 2020)
  • Introduction to the Sciences of ʿAqīda, Fiqh, and Tazkiya, Fall 2019