I began studying at CAIS in 2014 for undergraduate coursework and it rapidly became my favourite school on campus; the passion of each teacher was palpable, and at every turn was someone willing to answer my questions and feed my curiosity. This only increased as I moved into Honours research, and my specialised interests found ample room to take root, refine, and grow.

My Honours year was challenging but invaluable, as my coursework semester allowed me to layer two MEAS postgraduate courses on top of compulsory research methods training. Throughout the year, especially in the thesis-writing half, I had to remain diligent in staying on top of the deadlines I set for myself, but at every point, and with every section draft, I was supported and given clear direction by my supervisor Prof. James Piscatori. The experience overall was deeply formative for my academic skills, but even beneficial for my current work in the public sector as Honours comprehensively refined my analytical reasoning and my skills in collating/assessing evidence.

What I found most invigorating throughout my work was the tracing of such diverse and divergent threads of thought in Islamic thinking across time and space, how they manifest in practice and presentation, and how different interpretative traditions engage each other in an ever-continuous project to discover that which is right and wrong, just and unjust.