Ze'ev Maghen

Ze'ev Maghen is the Chair of The Department of Middle Eastern History at Bar-Ilan University in Israel and a research associate at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies. He is also part-time lecturer at the Shalem Center in Jerusalem, where he teaches courses such as "Judaism and Christianity in the Eyes of Islam" and "Shi'ite Religion and Iranian Revolution." Maghen received his Ph.D in History from Columbia University in 1997. He is also the creator of the Lights in Action student network of North America.

Research and Teaching

He has published articles on contemporary Iran, the theories of Joseph Schacht, the Islamic purity code, the status of infidels in Islamic law, and Muslim conceptions of Judaism. His current research explores the influence of Jewish ideas and stories on Islamic sources.

Advocacy

Dr. Maghen is also an outspoken advocate of Jewish growth, Jewish knowledge, Jewish joy and Zionist outreach. In a peroration written to the Jewish student body of Columbia in 1990, Maghen satirically lambasted his peers for their apologetic response to supposed anti-semitic hate speech on campus:

"A man calls you a pig. Do you walk around with a sign explaining that, in fact, you are not a pig? Do you hand out leaflets expostulating in detail upon the manifold differences between you and a pig ("A pig has a snout, I have a nose; a pig wallows in mud, I only occasionally step in a puddle, and then, of course, inadvertently...")? Do you stand on a soap box and discourse eruditely on why, in general, it is extremely not nice to call people pigs, and appeal to the populace to please have no truck with an individual rude and nasty enough to say such things about an upstanding citizen like yourself? Fellow Jews, where in hell is your dignity? Where is your abhorrence of useless, thoughtless, counterproductive endeavor?" [ [http://www.juedisches-archiv-chfrank.de/antisemit/FightAntiSem.html Ze'ev Maghen - How to Fight Anti-Semitism ] ]

Publications

*"After Hardship Cometh Ease: The Jews as Backdrop for Muslim Moderation." (New York: W. de Gruyter, 2006).
*"Virtues of the Flesh: Passion and Purity in Early Islamic Jurisprudence." (Boston: Brill, 2005).

Notes