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Uriya Shavit

Uriya Shavit is an Israeli author and full professor at Tel Aviv University who studies modern Islam, Muslim minorities in the West and democratization.

born 1975Research on Muslim minorities' religious lawStudies of Islam and democracyEditing the annual antisemitism reportJournalism at Haaretz

Born: 22 June 1975, Tel Aviv
Occupation: journalist, orientalist, university teacher, arabist
Education: Tel Aviv University

Uriya Shavit was born in 1975 in Tel Aviv

Uriya Shavit was born on June 22, 1975, in Tel Aviv, and grew up there. His parents are culture scholar Zohar Shavit and historian Yaacov Shavit. His younger brother is the writer and film critic Avner Shavit.

He attended Ironi Hey high school and served in IDF intelligence. He earned a bachelor's degree in Middle Eastern and Islamic studies at Tel Aviv University and continued on a direct doctoral track. His Ph.D. on Arab regimes was approved in 2005, and he did postdoctoral research in Germany in 2006 and 2007.

From 1997 to 2008 he worked in journalism. He was a foreign news editor and commentator at Haaretz, wrote columns and investigative pieces there, and edited the weekend supplements of Maariv and Makor Rishon.

His research covers Islamic approaches to democracy and the religious law of Muslim minorities, based on fatwas and field work in mosques in Europe and the United States. From 2016 to 2021 he headed the Department of Arabic and Islamic Studies. Since 2021 he has headed a joint institute for Jewish and Israel studies, and since 2022 he has also led the Center for the Study of Contemporary European Jewry and edited its annual report on antisemitism.

His book on Zionism in Arab thought, written with Ofir Winter, was the first Hebrew book published in Arabic translation in the United Arab Emirates after the Abraham Accords. Four of his children's books were chosen for the Education Ministry's Book Parade.