Mouad is a PhD student in the Department of Classics and Religious Studies. His research interests include Islamic intellectual history, Islamic law and exegesis, modern reform discourse, modernity, and epistemology. He is interested in investigating how modern Muslim thinkers have interacted with the pressures shaped by modernity’s shifting moral, social, and epistemic configurations, and how they have come to understand Islamic tradition, Islamic jurisprudence, and Muslim selfhood.

His research traces the genealogy of ijtihad by examining how its meaning and function have evolved across the intellectual work of modern reformist thinkers. His aim is to explore historical shifts in the evolution of ijtihad that go beyond approaching it merely as a legal method concerned with deriving rulings from the text in ostensibly neutral or epistemically intrinsic ways, but rather as: (1) a historically layered discourse and practice through which modern Muslim intellectuals have negotiated the boundaries of law, reason, authority, and normativity; and (2) a contested discursive site through which ijtihad intersects with nexuses of power, discourse, and subjectivity.

Before joining the University of Iowa, Mouad obtained a bachelor’s degree in linguistics in 2022 and a master’s degree in North African and Middle Eastern Studies in 2023 from Al Akhawayn University, Morocco, summa cum laude. After graduating from Al Akhawayn University, Mouad began his teaching career, teaching part-time at Al Akhawayn University’s Language Center before moving on to teach history, English, and research methods at the secondary level for three years. During these three years, he worked as a full-time teacher of AP Seminar and AP Research, where he taught Moroccan and international students. As part of his teaching assistantship, Mouad will be joining the Department of Rhetoric, where he will serve as the instructor of record for Rhetoric:1030: Writing and Communication.