Saba Mahmood(1962-2018) was associate professor of anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley. She is the author of Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject, which received the 2005 Victoria Schuck award from the American Association of Political Science. Most recently she is the co-author of Is Critique Secular? Blasphemy, Injury, and Free Speech (2009), published by the University of California Press. Her work has appeared in a variety of journals including Critical Inquiry, Cultural Anthropology, Boston Review, Social Research, American Ethnologist, Public Culture, and Cultural Studies. Mahmood is the recipient of the Carnegie Corporation’s scholar of Islam award (2007), and the Frederick Burkhardt fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies (2009-10). She was also a Co-PI on a three-year project, funded by the Henry R. Luce Initiative on Religion and International Affairs, that focuses on a comparative study of the right to religious liberty in western and non-western political contexts. Her broader work centers on issues of secularism, religion, gender, and postcoloniality in the Middle East.