Imran Aijaz

I am a Professor of Philosophy in the Department of Language, Culture, and the Arts at the University of Michigan–Dearborn, USA, where I have been a faculty member since 2010. I currently also serve as Co-Director of the university’s Honors Program. Prior to this, I completed a PhD in Philosophy at the University of Auckland, New Zealand

My research lies primarily in philosophy of religion and Islamic philosophy. I am especially interested in the philosophical evaluation of religious belief, with particular attention to doctrines and ideas found within the Islamic tradition. Much of my work focuses on questions concerning faith and reason, religious epistemology, religious diversity, and various problems of religious pluralism. I also have an interest in ancient philosophy and its reception among Jewish, Christian, and Islamic thinkers during the Middle Ages.

While my work draws on classical and contemporary Islamic sources, my primary aim is not to defend, develop, or reconstruct those traditions. Rather, I treat them as subjects of philosophical inquiry, evaluating their plausibility in light of contemporary philosophical problems and arguments. Although my research engages historical texts and figures, it is not primarily historical in orientation. Instead, I approach religious beliefs and traditions (especially Islam) as objects of philosophical investigation, asking whether and to what extent they remain philosophically defensible when subjected to rigorous critical scrutiny.

I am the author of two books. Islam: A Contemporary Philosophical Investigation (Routledge, 2018) examines the relationship between faith and reason in Islam, with particular attention to religious objections to the philosophical investigation of Islam, arguments for and against Islamic belief, and the rationality of such belief in the face of contemporary philosophical challenges. My second book, Problems of Heaven and Hell in Islam (Cambridge University Press, 2026), in the Cambridge Elements series Global Philosophy of Religion, examines philosophical problems raised by traditional Sunnī conceptions of the afterlife, particularly those concerning the nature and value of heaven, eternal punishment, and divine mercy, and develops an alternative account of heaven and salvation. I am also the editor of Problems in Contemporary Islamic Philosophy of Religion (MDPI, 2026), a collection of essays addressing contemporary philosophical problems arising from Islamic thought. I have also published numerous peer-reviewed journal articles and chapters in edited volumes on topics in philosophy of religion and Islamic philosophy.