Abdullah Al-Arian is an associate professor of history at Georgetown University in Qatar. He is the author of Answering the Call: Popular Islamic Activism in Sadat’s Egypt (Oxford University Press) and the editor of Football in the Middle East: State, Society, and the Beautiful Game (Hurst/Oxford University Press). He is editor of the “Critical Currents in Islam” page on the Jadaliyya e-zine. Previously, he was the Carnegie Centennial Visiting Fellow at the Josef Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver. His writing has appeared in Foreign Policy, Middle East Eye, MERIP, Muftah, and Al-Jazeera. He received his doctorate in history from Georgetown University. He also holds a master’s degree in sociology of religion from the London School of Economics and received his BA in political science from Duke University.