My work interrogates the intersections of migration, religion, ethics, and collective memory. His current project explores the relationship between the sharīʿah and customary law (xeer) in Bilad as-Ṣumal (today known as Somalia, but historically the lands incorporating current-day Djibouti, Eastern Ethiopia, and the NFD region of Kenya). My projects seeks to understand the intersections of anathematization, creedal factionalism/fluidity, and tensions between, inside and beyond the the class of religious elites who dominate this discourse.
I completed my graduate work in Heritage Studies and Public History at the University of Minnesota where I was an Andrew W. Mellon Graduate Fellow. During my time in the program, I conducted research in Islamic Law on fatāwā related to the emergence and response to COVID-19 with Dr. Hassan Abdelsalam, I was also a graduate fellow with the Islamic Cataloging team at the Hill Museum and Manuscript Library where I archived East African Manuscripts. I completed a FLAS Fellowship at the Arabic Language Institute in Fez where I explored the development and articulation of legal-ethical principles in the thought of the 5th-century Mālikī polymath, Abū al-Walīd al-Bājī (d. 474 AH) as articulated in his treatises Sunan aṣ-Ṣāliḥīn. In my final year, I conducted digital humanities and oral history projects with the University of Minnesota Libraries and MN Transform respectively.
I am a translator of classical Islamic texts from Arabic and poetry in my native language, Somali.
Advisors: Dr. Lee V. Cassanelli, Dr. Cheikh Anta Babou, Dr. Eve Troutt Powell
M.A., Heritage Studies & Public History, University of Minnesota
B.A., History, Augsburg University
B.A., Islamic Studies, Abubakar As-Siddique Institute for Islamic Studies
Islamic Law, Hadith Studies, Manuscript Studies, Transnational Networks of Learning, Itinerant scholars, Ulema-State paradigm, Natural Language Processing.
Mohamed, Mohamud. “Migration, Digitization, and Preservation - A Case Study of a Somali Manuscript” Hill Museum & Manuscript Library (2021)
Mohamed, Mohamud. “Beyond The Specter of The Colossus,” Atmos Earth (2021)
Mohamed, Mohamud. “From Zeila to Futa Jallon: Muslim States and the Colonial Encounter,” Black Muslim Psychology Conference Papers (2020).
Mohamed, Mohamud. “The Dugsi: A Dynamic or Outdated Methodology for Islamic Pedagogy in East Africa,” Black Muslim Psychology Conference Papers (2019).
Mohamed, Mohamud. “Reform, Authority, and Power: The Radical Hermeneutics of Ibn Taymiyyah and Martin Luther,” Augsburg Undergraduate Research Symposium (2018).
Mohamed, Mohamud. “A Bridge for The Sunnah in A Time of Fitnah -Towards a Theology of Mutual Support,” Senior Submission, Council on International Educational Exchange (Spring 2018).
Mohamed, Mohamud “Islam and Blackness: A crossroads" 1 & 2” Huffington Post. (2016)
The Schoenberg Institute for Manuscript Studies
Middle East Studies Association
African Studies Association
The Islamic Manuscript Association
Somali Studies International Association
American Society for Legal History