Khaled Al-Kassimi is an Associate Professor of Political Sociology, International Relations, and Legal Jurisprudent Philosophy at the American University in the Emirates. His teaching expertise includes subjects navigating International Law and International Relations, Geopolitics and Geography, International Relations and Diplomacy, and finally, Security Studies and Development Studies. He holds a Philosophical Doctorate in Political Science (Major I: International Relations; Major II: Political Philosophy) from the faculty of Social Sciences at McMaster University (2016-2020), a Masters’ degree in International Relations from McMaster University (2015-2016), and an Honours Bachelor of Arts with a combined specialist in History and Political Science from the University of Toronto (2009-2013).

His academic research navigates topics linked to jurisprudence and theology, geopolitics and political philosophy with a particular interest in epistemological differences pertaining to different theological and philosophical sources (i.e., revealed Law and rationalized law). Such eclectic disciplinary navigation has permitted Khaled Al-Kassimi to serve as an editor for multiple books, and publish peer-reviewed articles in a variety of journals interested in law and philosophy, history and political science with an eye appreciating the civilizational heritage accentuating the cultural reconnaissance between the Orient and Occident.

His most recent monograph published by Routledge entitled “International Law, Necropolitics, and Arab Lives – The Legalization of Creative Chaos in Arabia” argues that International Relations and International Law continue to be accented by epistemic violence by naturalizing a separation between law and morality. The main question accenting the monograph is: what does such positivist juridical ethos make possible when considering that both disciplines reify a secular (immanent) ontology?. The monograph emphasizes that positivist jurisprudence (re)-conquered Arabia by subjugating Arab life to the power of death (i.e., necropower) using extrajudicial techniques of violence seeking the implementation of a “New Middle East” that is no longer “resistant to Latin-European modernity”, but amenable to such exclusionary telos. The monograph goes beyond the limited remonstration asserting that the problématique with both disciplines is that they are primarily “Eurocentric”. Rather, the epistemic inquiry uncovers that legalizing necropower is necessary for the temporal coherence of secular-modernity since a humanitarian logic masks sovereignty inherently being necropolitical by categorizing Arab-Islamic epistemology as an internal-external enemy from which national(ist) citizenship must be defended. This creates a sense of danger around which to unite “modern” epistemology whilst reinforcing the purity of a particular ontology at the expense of banning and de-humanizing a supposed impure Arab world-view.

He is in the process of completing his second single-authored monograph critiquing the field of International Relations as both, mainstream and critical approaches to security, foreign relations, and development, remain secular in their proposed worldviews and epistemic alternatives. The tentative title of the book is “Blood, International Relations, and Secularity – Judeo-Christian Political-Theology and the Ishmaelite as (a Necessary) Outcast”