Wael B. Hallaq is the Avalon Foundation Professor in the Humanities at Columbia University, where he teaches and writes about Islamic law, ethics, and intellectual history. His books, translated into a number of languages, include Shariʿa: Theory, Practice, Transformations (2009) and The Impossible State: Islam, Politics, and Modernity’s Moral Predicament (2013), which won Columbia University Press’s Distinguished Book Award.