Jonathan is married to Laila Al-Arian, an American broadcast journalist for the Al Jazeera Media Network. Al-Arian's father, Sami Al-Arian, is a Kuwaiti-born political activist who was deported from the U.S. to Turkey.[5]
He was previously engaged to Maysoon Al-Suwaidan,[6] daughter of Islamic author and speaker, Tareq Al-Suwaidan, a leader of Kuwait's Muslim Brotherhood who is banned from the U.S. and Belgium because of his comments on Jews and Israel.[7]
From 2006 to 2010 he taught in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilization at the University of Washington in Seattle, where he was awarded tenure. He then gave up tenure to move to Georgetown in 2010. After serving as an assistant professor he was granted tenure again in 2012, teaching Islamic Studies and Muslim-Christian Understanding in the School of Foreign ServiceatGeorgetown University.[8][9] He is also a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations.[10]
Brown has published work on Hadith, Islamic law, Sufism, Arabic lexical theory and Pre-Islamic poetry and is currently focused on the history of forgery and historical criticism in Islamic civilization and modern conflicts between late Sunni Traditionalism and Salafism in Islamic Thought.[12]
In his book Misquoting Muhammad, Brown argues that the “depth and breadth” of the early Muslim scholars’ achievement in assessing the authenticity of sayings and texts “dwarfed” that of the fathers of the Christian church.[13] The book received a number of positive reviews,[14][15][16] and was named as one of the top books on religion of 2014 by The Independent.[17] One review of the book in a Catholic journal praised the book calling it "generous to a fault when it comes to remarks about Christianity."[18]
In a 2017 article, Brown stated that "the term ‘slavery’ is so ambiguous as to be functionally useless for the purposes of discussing extreme domination and exploitation across history," especially in the context of Islamic history. Brown wrote that the current understanding of "slavery" is defined primarily in terms of legal ownership and violations of autonomy. According to Brown, this understanding does not accurately reflect the way slavery was practiced in many times and places in the Islamic world. For example, some enslaved Ottoman officials held authority over free people, while some forms of extreme exploitation happened to legally free persons.[19] Brown writes that while slavery's evil "is so morally clear and so widely acknowledged", and that it is the "Hitler of human practices",[20] he also wishes to challenge the current understanding of slavery.[19]
A lecture presenting this article,[21] and in particular comments Brown made during the Q&A session, sparked criticism from a number of commentators, some of whom accused Brown of supporting slavery and rape.[22][23][24] In addition, some liberal scholars of Islam criticized Brown for relativizing the concepts of slavery, human autonomy, and consent, and took issue with his suggestion that Muslims cannot view all historical forms of slavery to be immoral since the Islamic prophet Muhammad had owned slaves.[22]
In response, Brown wrote on Twitter, "Islam as a faith and I as a person condemn slavery, rape and concubinage."[22][25] In a subsequent essay and interview Brown elaborated his views and apologized for having addressed the subject too cerebrally, adding that members of the alt-right had bombarded him and his family with threats of death and rape over the controversy.[22][26]
^Brown, Jonathon A.C.; Ali, Abdullah Hamid (Feb 7, 2017). "Slavery and Islam – Part 1: The Problem of Slavery"(PDF). p. 18. Retrieved 30 April 2019. Slavery is the ideal example to invoke because its evil is so morally clear and so widely acknowledged. Who would defend slavery? It is the Hitler of human practices. Yet despite all its power, the word "slavery" is rarely defined.
