Youssef Belal is an anthropologist and a political theorist. He is also a UN diplomat who has been director of political affairs of several United Nations missions in the Middle East, Central Asia and the Horn of Africa. He has taught at Columbia University and the University of California, Berkeley, and was selected as a member of the Princeton’s Institute for Advanced Study in 2016. He is the author of numerous publications, most notably Le cheikh et le calife: Sociologie religieuse de l’Islam politique au Maroc published in 2011 by the Ecole Normale Editions in France. His latest book was published by University of California Press in May 2025, entitled The Life of Shari’a. A Comparative Anthropology of Law that offers both a new genealogy of modern law and a new conceptualization of shariʿa. He is currently writing a book on Gaza.