Dr Malise Ruthven (born 1942) is a writer and historian who focuses his work on religion, fundamentalism, and especially Islamic affairs. Ruthven has been a scriptwriter with the BBC Arabic and World Service, and a consultant on Middle Eastern affairs. He has taught Islamic Studies and Comparative Religion at the University of Aberdeen, the University of California, San Diego, and Dartmouth College. He used the term "Islamofascism" as early as 8 September 1990 in The Independent.
Ruthven is the younger son of Major the Hon. Alexander Hardinge Patrick Hore-Ruthven and Pamela Margaret Fletcher. His elder brother, Grey Ruthven, is 2nd Earl of Gowrie. Ruthven is the godson of the late Freya Stark (1893-1993), whom his parents knew in Cairo in 1942, and has published several collections of her photographs.
He is a frequent contributor to the New York Review of Books. He has also contributed an afterword to the most recent edition of Albert Hourani's History of the Arab Peoples, bringing that work up to date following Hourani's death.
"If imitatio Christi meant renouncing worldly ambition and seeking salvation by deeds of private virtue, imitatio Muhammadi meant sooner or later taking up arms against those forces which seemed to threaten Islam from within or without."