Sachiko Murata

Sachiko Murata is Professor of Religion and Asian Studies at Stony Brook University and one of the world’s leading scholars of Sufism, Islamic philosophy, and comparative thought. Her work has transformed contemporary understanding of Islamic intellectual traditions by placing them in conversation with Chinese philosophy, particularly Daoism and Confucianism, while also advancing groundbreaking studies of gender, cosmology, and spirituality in Islam.

Born and educated in Japan, Professor Murata pursued advanced studies in Iran, where she earned a doctorate from the University of Tehran. This unique intellectual formation provided her with direct access to both Islamic and East Asian traditions, enabling her to develop a comparative approach that has become one of the hallmarks of her scholarship. Throughout her career, she has sought to uncover shared philosophical concerns across civilizations while respecting the distinctive character of each tradition.

A major focus of Professor Murata’s work has been Islamic metaphysics and cosmology, particularly within the traditions of Ibn ʿArabī and later Islamic thought. Her writings explore themes such as divine unity, the structure of reality, human nature, and the relationship between the masculine and feminine dimensions of existence. Through careful engagement with classical sources, she has demonstrated the depth and sophistication of Islamic philosophical and mystical approaches to questions of existence and selfhood.

Professor Murata is especially renowned for her landmark book The Tao of Islam: A Sourcebook on Gender Relationships in Islamic Thought (1992), which remains one of the most influential studies of gender in the Islamic intellectual tradition. Drawing on Quranic, philosophical, and Sufi sources, the work challenged prevailing assumptions about gender in Islam and offered a nuanced account of the symbolic, cosmological, and spiritual dimensions of male-female relationships in Islamic thought.

Another defining contribution of her scholarship has been the study of Islam in China. Through pioneering research on the Han Kitab—the body of Islamic literature written in Chinese by Muslim scholars—Professor Murata has illuminated one of the most fascinating episodes in global intellectual history. Her books Chinese Gleams of Sufi Light (2000) and The First Islamic Classic in Chinese (2017) have shown how Chinese Muslim thinkers creatively translated Islamic metaphysics and spirituality into the conceptual language of Confucianism and Daoism, producing a distinctive intellectual synthesis that remains largely unknown outside specialist circles.

Professor Murata’s scholarship has had a profound impact not only on Islamic studies but also on broader conversations in comparative religion, global philosophy, and cross-cultural intellectual history. Her work demonstrates how philosophical and spiritual traditions can serve as bridges between civilizations, revealing shared concerns about reality, ethics, self-cultivation, and the human relationship to the divine.

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