Shadi Hamid


Shadi Hamid is an American author and a senior fellow in Brookings Institution. He is also a contributing writer at The Atlantic. He has been called a "prominent thinker on religion and politics" in the New York Times and was named as one of "The world's top 50 thinkers" in 2019 by Prospect Magazine.. He is known for coining the phrase "Islamic exceptionalism," to describe Islam's resistance to secularization and outsized role in public life, although this has come under some criticism.

Education

A Marshall Scholar, Hamid completed his doctoral degree in politics at Oxford University in 2010. His dissertation was titled Democrats without Democracy: the Unlikely Moderation of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and Jordan. Hamid received his B.S. and M.A. from Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service.

Research

Hamid was a Hewlett Fellow at Stanford University's Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law and a Fulbright Fellow in Jordan, researching Islamist participation in the democratic process, and a research fellow at the American Center for Oriental Research in Amman, where he conducted research on the relationship between the Muslim Brotherhood and the Jordanian government.
He is the author of three books and his articles have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Time, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, and The New Republic. He also regularly appears on television, including CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, and PBS.

Books

Reception

Islamic Exceptionalism: How the Struggle Over Islam is Reshaping the World was shortlisted for the 2017 Lionel Gelber Prize. Temptations of Power: Islamists and Illiberal Democracy in a New Middle East was named a Foreign Affairs "Best Book of 2014."