Berkley Center

Lulie El-Ashry is a Ph.D. candidate in the study of religion at Harvard University and summer 2018 doctoral fellow with the Berkley Center's Religious Freedom Research Project. In her dissertation she studies Islam’s historical and contemporary presence in the West through the lens of transnational Sufi networks and Sufism in Europe. With a historical and ethnographic case study of a prominent European Sufi order, she considers how autochthonous Italian and French Muslims confront issues of identity negotiation, compatibility of the Islamic tradition with European culture and values, and engagement with immigrant Muslim communities. She also investigates the extent to which the community actively participates in the public sphere to help counter Islamic extremism and ensure the freedom to practice Islam as a religious minority. El-Ashry holds an A.M. and M.T.S. in Islamic studies from Harvard University and Harvard Divinity School and an M.A. and B.A. in political science from the American University in Cairo.