Ali A Olomi

Ali A. Olomi is a historian of the Middle East, writer, public intellectual, and leading Afghan American thinker. He graduated with a degree in history from University of California, Los Angeles and is currently at University of California, Irvine.
His research interests include cultural and intellectual history, empire and colonialism, gender and sexuality, history of religion, Islam, and terrorism and insurgency. He writes primarily about the Middle East, Afghanistan, and foreign policy with the aim of bringing historical context to contemporary events. His articles have appeared in the History News Network, openDemocracy, and other places.
In an article for the International Policy Digest, Ali wrote that the United States was losing the war with the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant because the framework of US policy made it “unthinkable” to conceive of the group as a political movement.
On July 17th 2015, Ali A Olomi published an article historicizing homosexuality in Islam for Duke University’s ISLAMiCommentary, a forum for public scholarship on Islam. He argued that the overwhelming history of Islam leans towards toleration and acceptance, arguing that Muslims who condemn homosexuality were “projecting modern sensibilities” on textual sources. The article has since gone viral and has been widely spread among major Muslim circles, among activists, and has been featured in Reza Aslan’s resources website on LGBTQ issues in Islam.
Ali A. Olomi is the relative of Afghanistan’s Interior Minister, Nur ul-Haq Ulumi and a descendent of Dost Mohammad Khan through his great grandfather and grandmother King Amanullah Khan and Queen Soraya.

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