Asma Afsaruddin is an Islamic professor in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures at Indiana University in Bloomington. She is specialized in the religious and political thought of Islam, Qur’an, Hadith and gender studies. She earned Ph.D. in Arabic and Islamic studies from John Hopkins University. She has previously taught at Harvard University and the University of Notre Dame. In addition to numerous articles, she is the author and editor of many books. Her popular books include Striving in the Path of God: Jihad and Martyrdom in Islamic Thought (2013), and Contemporary Issues in Islam (2011). Her research has been funded by the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation, the American Research Institute of Turkey and the Carnegie Corporation New York, which also named her a Carnegie Scholar in 2005.

Afsaruddin has been an editorial board member for the Middle East Studies Association Bulletin which was published by Cambridge University Press. She currently chairs the Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy board of directors.  She was an editor of the Routledge Encyclopedia of Medieval Islamic Civilization and a consultant for the Oxford Dictionary of Islam (2002). She also sits on advisory committees for the Muslim World Initiative of the United States Institute of Peace and the human rights organization in Kamrah. In 2015 Afsaruddin was presented the country’s top award, the Jayezeh Jahani (World Book Prize), for the best new book in Islamic Studies for her book Striving in the Path of God. In 2014 the book was also a runner-up for the British-Kuwaiti Friendship Society Book Prize.