Sarah Islam completed her Ph.D. in Near Eastern Studies at Princeton under the supervision of Michael Cook, where her research focused on the social and intellectual history of Islamic criminal law. She is currently completing her J.D. at Yale Law School. Her dissertation and first book project, Sabb al-Rasūl (Insulting the Prophet) as a Legal Category in Early and Medieval Islamic History, which won the Bayard and Cleveland Dodge Memorial Prize for Best Dissertation in Near Eastern Studies, and Honorable Mention for the Middle East Studies Association Best Dissertation Award, examines the evolution of blasphemy as a legal category among capital crimes in Islamic legal history.

Using theoretical frameworks from the Sociology of Law, her book examines the social and political variables that explain how and why blasphemy shifted from being deemed a largely private act considered unactionable by judges and without penalty in the early medieval era, to an act that was increasingly assigned the death penalty in parts of the Ottoman Empire and now in some Muslim countries in a contemporary context. Her research has been supported by the Charlotte Newcombe Foundation, Yale Liman Public Interest Law Program, Social Science Research Council, Fulbright Program, and National Endowment for the Humanities. Her academic work thus far has been published by Sage, Brill, and Oxford University Presses.

Her work in international public and human rights law as well as free speech issues led to her serving on advisory councils during the Obama administration at the U.S. Department of State and the U.S Department of Justice (Advisory Council to Eric Treene, Esq., Special Counsel for Religious Discrimination, Civil Rights Division, Office of the Assistant Attorney General of the United States). Among other pursuits, she has been invited to present at the United Nations on issues related to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), and to contribute to U.S. Supreme Court case amicus briefs integrating international and comparative legal perspectives.

While a doctoral student at Princeton, Sarah was appointed by the university to serve on the Strategic Planning Task Force on the Future of the Graduate School, the Search Committee for the Dean of the Graduate School, and the Provost’s Priorities and Budget Committee. As an alum she was recently appointed by Princeton University to serve on the Dean’s Leadership Council, an advisory body that provides strategic planning advice to the Graduate School.

Until 2024, she was a Postdoctoral Fellow with the Co-Produced Religions Project, co-directed by David Nirenberg (Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton) and Katharina Heyden (University of Bern). She is currently completing her J.D. at Yale Law School.

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