Omid Safi is Professor of Islamic Studies at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, specializing in contemporary Islamic thought and classical Islam. He is author of Politics of Knowledge in Premodern Islam (2006) and Memories of Muhammad (2010). He is also editor of two volumes, Progressive Muslims: On Justice, Gender, and Pluralism (2003) and Voices of Islam: Voices of Change (2006). He has a forthcoming book on the famed mystic Rumi and is currently working on a monograph discussing contemporary Islamic debates in Iran.