Walid Saleh is the AAR’s Vice President in 2026, will serve as President-Elect in 2027, and he will be AAR’s President in 2028.
Walid A. Saleh is Professor of Islamic Studies in the Department for the Study of Religion at the University of Toronto. He is also a former Director of the Institute of Islamic Studies. His research focuses on Qur’anic exegesis (tafsīr), Islamic intellectual history, and the reception of the Bible in Islam. He has received several prestigious fellowships, including the Konrad Adenauer Fellowship from the Humboldt Foundation and the New Directions Fellowship from the Mellon Foundation. His publications include The Formation of the Classical Tafsīr Tradition: The Qurʾān Commentary of al-Thaʿlabī (d. 427/1035) (Brill, 2004), and In Defense of the Bible: A Critical Edition and an Introduction to al-Biqāʾī’s Bible Treatise (Brill, 2008). He has published over 50 articles on topics related to Qur’anic interpretation, the gloss tradition, and Islamic apocalypticism. He is the editor of the Routledge Qur’an Series and serves on the editorial boards of the Journal of the American Academy of Religion and the Journal of Qur’anic Studies. He is completing a monograph on the history of Qur’anic interpretation and Islam.