Denis MacEoin

Denis M. MacEoin (b. Belfast, Northern Ireland, 1949) is a former editor of the Middle East Quarterly^[1] and is also a novelist. A former lecturer in Islamic studies, his academic specialisations are Shi‘ism, Shaykhism, Bábism, and the Bahá'í Faith, on all of which he has written extensively. His novels are written under the pen names Daniel Easterman and Jonathan Aycliffe.^[2] He and his wife live in Newcastle upon Tyne in the United Kingdom.

Background and education

MacEoin studied English Language and Literature at the University of Dublin (Trinity College) and Persian, Arabic and Islamic Studies at the University of Edinburgh. He carried out research for his PhD degree at King's College, Cambridge. His PhD dissertation dealt with two heterodox movements in 19th-century Iranian Shi‘ism: Shaykhism and Bábism.^{[citation needed]}

From 1979-80, he taught English, Islamic Civilization, and Arabic-English translation at Mohammed V University in Fez, Morocco, before taking up a post as lecturer in Arabic and Islamic Studies at Newcastle University.^[2] In 1986, he was made Honorary Fellow in the Centre for Islamic and Middle East Studies at Durham University. He was the Royal Literary Fund Fellow at Newcastle University from 2005-2008.^[3]

He has been married to homoeopath and health writer Beth MacEoin since 1975. She is the author of around 20 books on natural health, including the Natural Medicines Society book, Natural Medicine: A practical guide to family Health, which was published by Bloomsbury at the end of 1999, and Homeopathy: Medicine for the 21st Century (Kyle Cathie, 2006).

An advocate of alternative medicine since the 1960s (he was chairman of the UK Natural Medicines Society during the 1980s and 1990s), he has in more recent years taken a serious interest in the sociology and politics of medicine, and in the relations between CAM and conventional therapy. He has lectured to medical students on these topics. For many years, until its demise in 2003, he was chairman, then president of the Natural Medicines Society, a UK charity for the general public.

He continues to work on Islamic issues, particularly the development of radical Islam. He has written three reports for British think tanks, dealing with Islamic issues. The first was The Hijacking of British Islam, written for Policy Exchange. It is a study of hate literature found in British mosques and other institutions. He later wrote a report on British Muslim schools, published online by Civitas, entitled Music, Chess and other Sins. In 2009, Civitas also published in hard copy Shari'a Law or One Law for All.

A dominant interest over the past ten years has been advocacy for the state of Israel, a topic on which he writes a blog and about which he has written widely.

Publications

He has published extensively on Islamic topics, contributing to the Encyclopaedia of Islam, the Oxford Encyclopaedia of Islam in the Modern World, the Encyclopædia Iranica, the Penguin Handbook of Religions, journals, festschrifts, and books, and has himself written a number of academic books.^[2]

He was a member of the Bahá'í Faith from 1965–1980, but left the movement over differences with the administration, disagreements about Baha'i scholarship, and a basic loss of religious faith.^{[citation needed]} For several years he published books and articles critical of Bahá'í practices, and their level of scholarship.

Since 1986 he has pursued his principal career as a novelist, having so far written twenty-three novels, several of them best-sellers. He uses the pen-names Daniel Easterman ^[4] (international thrillers) and Jonathan Aycliffe ^[4] (classic ghost stories in the tradition of M.R. James). Among the best-known Easterman titles are: The Seventh Sanctuary, The Ninth Buddha, The Judas Testament, Incarnation, Brotherhood of the Tomb, K, The Final Judgement, Midnight Comes at Noon, Night of the Seventh Darkness, Maroc.

Some Aycliffe titles include Naomi's Room, Whispers in the Dark, The Matrix, The Lost and A Garden Lost in Time. The Matrix is centred around an indestructible occult tome, the Matrix Aeternitatas (which, rather like the cursed talisman in M.R. James' "Casting the Runes") is unable to be given back once one has taken possession of it. The novel also features strong themes of black magic and necromancy.

A collection of his journalism was published under the Easterman name by HarperCollins in 1992 under the title New Jerusalems: Islam, the Rushdie Affair, and Religious Fundamentalism.

Representative works

• Denis MacEoin (1992). The Sources for Early Bābī Doctrine and History. Leiden: Brill. ISBN 9004094628. http://books.google.com/books?id=xqV9-zmMxsUC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_atb#v=onepage&q&f=false. 

• Denis MacEoin (1994). Rituals in Babism and Baha'ism. UK: British Academic Press and Centre of Middle Eastern Studies, University of Cambridge. ISBN 1850436541. http://books.google.com/books?hl=nl&lr=&id=4Bpd0xhUKewC&oi=fnd&pg=RA1-PR9&sig=9Fd_jmfePvTHGFcVQvePgDI7XcM&dq=%22MacEoin%22+%22Rituals+in+Babism+and+Baha%27ism%22+#PPP1,M1. 

• Denis MacEoin (2008). The Messiah of Shiraz: Studies in Early and Middle Babism. Leiden: Brill. ISBN 978 90 04 17035 3. http://books.google.com/books?id=LgOPsxZofrkC&printsec=frontcover&hl=nl&source=gbs_atb#v=onepage&q&f=false. 

External links

• Biography
• Biography - From Newcastle University
• Daniel Easterman - a checklist

References

1. ^ Marcus Dysch (22 September 2011). "How one man's protest went around the globe". The Jewish Chronicle. http://www.thejc.com/news/uk-news/55138/how-one-mans-protest-went-around-globe. Retrieved 23 September 2011. 
2. ^ ^{a b c} "Biography of Denis MacEoin". Middle East Forum. http://www.meforum.org/staff/Denis+MacEoin. 
3. ^ "Denis MacEoin". The Royal Literary Fund. http://www.rlf.org.uk/fellowshipscheme/profile.cfm?fellow=141. 
4. ^ ^{a b} The Writers Directory 2008, Volume 2 Edited by Michelle Kazensky. Thomson Gale, 2007 (pg. 1238).

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Name	Maceoin, Denis
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Date of birth	1949
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