Adnan A. Zulfiqar is a legal historian whose scholarship focuses on critically examining assumptions and frameworks underpinning legal discourses. His primary fields of inquiry are criminal law & procedure, Islamic jurisprudence and law in the Global South. In criminal law and procedure, his work explores questions of policing, punishment and various aspects of codification. In Islamic jurisprudence, aside from Islamic criminal law, Professor Zulfiqar also studies how jurists conceive of and develop legal obligations, particularly in the context of revolution and warfare/jihad. He is fluent in multiple languages, which he utilizes in his research.
Professor Zulfiqar joined the faculty at Rutgers Law as an Assistant Professor in 2017. Prior to that, he was a Sharswood Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, a Harry F. Guggenheim Fellow and a CASA Fellow (Damascus, Syria). He previously helped draft and implement new Criminal Codes and Commentaries for the Republic of the Maldives and the Federal Republic of Somalia. He also worked as an Associate in the Investigations, White Collar and Fraud Group at Hogan Lovells, LLP (Washington, D.C.) and was a Legislative Staffer for U.S. Senator Max Cleland (D-GA).
Currently, he is a Fellow at the Truman National Security Project, an Editor for SHARIASource at Harvard Law School and on the Editorial Board of the Arab Law Quarterly. He is also Chair (2019-2020) of the Section on Islamic Law at American Association of Law Schools (AALS). In 2019, Professor Zulfiqar was selected as Wallace Johnson Fellow by the American Society for Legal History (ASLH) to support his first book on Collective Duties (fard kifaya) in Islamic Law.
He earned his J.D. (Law), M.A. and Ph.D. (Near Eastern Languages & Civilizations) from the University of Pennsylvania, his M.L.S. (International Affairs) from Georgetown University and a B.A. (Religion and Anthropology) from Emory University.