Michael Arnold is a researcher and editor at TRT World Research Centre. He holds a Bachelor of Arts in Military and Diplomatic History from the University of Calgary and earned a Master of Arts in Islamic Studies with a dissertation entitled “Overlapping Sacred Spaces: Islam, Pluralism and the Hegemony of ‘Human Rights’”. He is currently a PhD candidate in the Arab and Middle East History programme at the American University of Beirut. His research interests include modern Arab and Middle East political and social history - with a special focus on Lebanon - religious authority in Arab states, and the history of Islamic thought.