He is professor of world literature at Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar.
[1] He is interested in showing how Islam has been an overlooked factor in the formation of Europe.
In his work on philosophy, he argues that many postmodernists rely on an Orientalist tropes in writing about Islam.
His works seek to explore the repressed spirituality of allegedly secular authors.
His books have been translated into several languages, including Arabic, Turkish, Persian, Korean, Indonesian and Bosnian.