Her scholarly work straddled debates in anthropology and political theory, with a focus on Muslim majority societies of the Middle East and South Asia.

Mahmood made major theoretical contributions to rethinking the relationship between ethics and politics, religion and secularism, freedom and submission, and reason and embodiment.

Mahmood served on the editorial boards of Representations,[6] Anthropology Today, L'Homme, Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, and Journal of the American Academy of Religion.

[7] Mahmood was the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships, including an honorary doctorate from Uppsala University,[8] the Carnegie Corporation's scholar of Islam award,[9] the Frederick Burkhardt fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies, and grants from the Henry Luce Foundation, the American Council of Learned Societies, and Harvard Academy of International and Area Studies.

[12] Crossing disciplinary boundaries in the humanities and social sciences, her work has shaped theoretical and ethnographic inquiry into religion and freedom in modernity, as well as the legacies of colonialism, capitalism, and secularism in contemporary conflicts in the Middle East.

The book's key theoretical interventions include examining Aristotelian discourses on ethics as they are taken up in both the Islamic tradition and continental thought; critically engaging anthropological theory on cultural and embodied practice, including the work of Marcel Mauss, Pierre Bourdieu and Michel Foucault; and intervening in feminist theory on agency, gender and embodiment, and particularly through the work of Judith Butler.

Mahmood concludes that "political secularism is the modern state's sovereign power to reorganize substantive features of religious life, stipulating what religion is or ought to be, assigning its proper content, and disseminating concomitant subjectivities, ethical frameworks, and quotidian practices".

[1] On her behalf, the Department of Anthropology of the University of California said: "Saba Mahmood was a brilliant scholar, cherished colleague, and dedicated teacher and graduate mentor.

Along with her ceaseless political passions and trenchant analyses, she keened to the beauty of the wilderness, the poetry of Ghalib, the delights of cooking and sharing excellent food.

She mentored her students with remarkable care and intensity, demanding their best work, listening, responding with a sharp generosity, coming alive in thought, and soliciting others to do the same.

In her final months, she affirmed the values of thought and love, leaving now a vibrant legacy that will persist and flourish among all whose lives were touched by her life and work.