The raised interest towards Islam and Muslims, and more specifically towards individuals able to speak for Islam, has led to the emergence of a broad literature on contemporary Muslim thinkers also within the English-speaking academia. The last three decades, therefore, have witnessed the emergence of a progressively distinct field of contemporary Islamic thought in the “Western” academia. This field has been strongly shaped by socio-political context, including government’s interest in promoting specific understandings of Islam. While recent scholarship has explored governments’ role in framing the production of knowledge on Islam and Muslim thinkers in North American and Europe (Mahmood, Aidi, Hafez) less attention has been paid to the agency of academics involved in shaping this field, and the way they negotiate governments’ policies. These scholars, indeed, often opposed governments’ agenda, in some instances using the resources they received to challenge states’ narratives. In this process, they had an important role as gatekeepers by selecting the thinkers to translate and/or discuss in their publications, and by mobilizing and securing resources for these thinkers to enter European institutions. By elaborating Bourdieu's analysis of the role of gatekeepers in the international circulation of ideas (Bourdieu, 2002), the paper investigates the role of academics in shaping the debate over religious authority and knowledge in Islam in the English literature. This will be conducted by exploring the way scholars influenced the distribution of knowledge, resources and ultimately status for individuals emerging in the English literature as “contemporary Muslim intellectuals”.