The history PhD market is pretty grim in general, but someone such as u/cptbuck may be able to talk about non-academic jobs with those specializations.

Consider the federal intelligence agencies, especially with your interest in Islam. There are far more intelligence gathering and interpretation of information agencies than you may be aware. And highly recommend you learn Arabic. Have you considered ROTC? (Army, Air Force, Navy) High probability you would find yourself in military intelligence especially if you request MI even with a BA. (The military might send you to school for your PhD. Most of the senior officers in the military have advanced degrees.) The training one receives is very valuable and would raise your desirability even in the private sector. Even as a sophomore you can join ROTC and be deferred to obtain your PhD. At one time there were ROTC programs that paid tuition and books plus a monthly stipend. (Example: The army has their own medical school.) If this direction interests you, I would suggest you talk with one of the ROTC cadre (active duty military officer) either at your University or a school with a program. (NOT the local recruiter!) Being ex-military officer will open doors.

With thanks for the heads up from /u/jschooltiger, I can talk a bit non-academic jobs in this field.

Let me preface this by saying that I do not have a PhD. I have a BA in Arabic and Islamic Studies (that I can turn into an MA in a few years if I want to for reasons that are dumb/complicated/historically obsolete: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master_of_Arts_(Oxbridge_and_Dublin))

But! I have made a career out of working on and about the region and worked with a bunch of PhDs who have gone the non-academic route so I have a decent feel for what’s out there.

Some preliminary considerations: there are plenty of places that will hire you with those qualifications but it depends a lot on what you want to actually speciialize in as to whether or not it will be relevant to your interests. So for example if you were to write a PhD dissertation on 11th century Sufi poetry in the Maghreb, you could almost certainly get a job at the Middle East department of a management consultancy firm, but you’ll be looking how ARAMCO can improve its profit margins, not Sufi poetry.

The modern Levant, on the other hand, has a lot more opportunities for practical, relevant jobs. So let’s say you did your dissertation on the development of Salafi-Jihadi networks in Syria from 2011-2013, there are a lot of places that would pay you to keep looking at Salafi-Jihadi groups.

So that’s the question of specialization.

The other question is language and regional experience.

I am not fluent in Arabic, but I am highly proficient. If you hand me a newspaper, I can read it. For my professional purposes, that has been good enough, but I frequently run into job listings that require fluency, and that’s a pretty binary cutoff.

If you’re not on track to develop those kind of language skills, a PhD on these topics probably isn’t in the cards anyways as it’s usually a pre-requisite.

I have also spent a lot of time in the region itself. In the past ten years I’ve spent about 5 of them split between the UAE, Egypt, and Jordan. I’ve also travelled as extensively as has been feasible. There’s a big credibility gap between people who have done their overseas time and those who haven’t, particularly when people from the region itself who are native speakers are your competition. This isn’t necessarily a deal breaker, there are some prominent Syria analysts who have never set foot in Syria, but they’re reminded of that fact constantly.

If you have the chance to do a year abroad somewhere, I would encourage you to do so.

Ok so with those preliminaries out of the way, what are some of your options?

1. Think Tanks. Getting a fellowship at a think tank is probably about as competitive as getting a tenure track position at a university—it has a lot of the same benefits except you don’t have to teach. There are also lower level research positions at these think tanks. Pretty much everyone doing anything interesting at a think tank has a PhD though, and even some of the people not doing interesting work. Think Tanks tend to have a political leaning, e.g. Brookings is center left, Heritage is right. There are also Middle East specialty think tanks. Some of these have regional political questions (e.g. is it funded by Qatar or is it funded by Saudi?)

So, that’s a difficult world to enter but it’s probably the closest equivalent to academia and will let you work on either historical or contemporary issues.

2. Journalism. The journalism market is rough. But a PhD, particularly one with field experience, might be attractive. Journalism doesn’t pay well, and they might want to send you to not-nice places. This is also one where they’re probably going to want you to be fluent.

3. Risk Consultancies. There are a lot of interesting consultancies that are hiring people with regional expertise. Have a look at the job openings at someplace like Eurasia Group or Control Risks.

Two jobs ago I worked as a security analyst for one of these firms writing basically about terrorism and other threats in the region. It was a great job, paid well. Your mileage may vary. Some of these firms do not pay well if you’re working in the West, but are much more attractive if you’re willing to move to, say, Dubai.

4. Management consultancies

Depending on your interests, this might interesting to you. They pay pretty damn well and will reward your PhD degree with title and salary. These firms can and do work on interesting deep questions about the Middle East for government and corporate clients. But you might also be figuring out due diligence for a cement factory acquisition in Karachi.

It’s an option, but one that I’ve avoided.

5. Government agencies.

There are a lot of government agencies that are in theory interested in these skills as another poster mentioned. Assuming you’re a US citizen, these include State, CIA, FBI, and NSA.

These jobs are highly competitive. Former CIA Director Hayden once gave out some absurd figure for how many full length applications the CIA gets each year. These applications are not simple to submit. There’s also an, ahem, interesting political situation at the moment. State flat out was not hiring last year under Tillerson, I’m not sure if that has continued under Pompeo.

6. Government contractors

Booze Allen Hamilton and other similar contractors have analyst positions similar to the agencies. The problem is that they’re often looking for people who have experience at those agencies. Many jobs require not just a graduate degree but an existing security clearance or familiarity with proprietary government analytic software.

7. Basically unrelated corporate positions in-region

If you just want a job that uses your language and regional skills, there’s a lot of that in-region. I briefly worked in PR in Abu Dhabi. For a variety of reasons I wasn’t especially happy with that, but it used more regional expertise than you might expect (particularly requiring a familiarity with regional media, as you might imagine.)

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So to wrap up, can I guarantee you a job opening with a PhD in this field? No, and a lot of these jobs are highly competitive. But there’s no lack of availability of jobs per se. It depends a lot on your interests, your hypothetical specialty, your skills, and how far you’re willing to stray from the purity of academia.

Edit: ugggh, the numbering got messed up 🤷‍♂️

My brother in law got PhD in Chinese and Tibetan religion and was recruited by the State Department before he even graduated. He has worked at embassies all over Asia. He insists he's not CIA but he could be:)