Michael A. Sells

Sells has been a scholar of the Islamic religious and cultural tradition for four decades. His important translations and writings on Arabic poetry set the standard for English-language scholarship in this field, and his books and articles focus on the Qur'an and especially Muslim mysticism (Sufism). In the wake of the terrible Balkan conflicts of the 1990s he spoke out and wrote about the Serbian Christian genocidal war on Bosnian Muslims and the other Balkan Christians who sided with them, showing that the genocide was based in Christoslavist religious as well as Serbian nationalist ideology. Sells is a leading Islamic studies scholar who specializes in Arabic poetry, Sufi (and comparative mystical) thought and literature, qur'anic studies, and religion and politics in Balkan Europe, and religion and violence.