Isma’il Raji Al-Faruqi (1921–86)

Abstract

Faruqi was born in Palestine in 1921. He graduated from the American University of Beirut in philosophy. He joined the civil service in British Mandate Palestine in 1945, and later became the last Governor of Galilee. The occupation of Palestine brought him to the United States. There he obtained two masters degrees in philosophy from Indiana and Harvard Universities, and completed his PhD in 1952 ‘On Justifying the Good: Metaphysics and Epistemology of Value’. In search of the classical Islamic heritage, he studied at Al-Azhar from 1954 to 1958. A year later, at the invitation of Professor Cantwell Smith, he joined the Faculty of Divinity, at McGill University, Montreal, where he studied Judaism and Christianity and produced his major academic work, Christian Ethics. For two years, 1961–63, on the advice of Dr Fazlur Rahman, he joined the Institute for Islamic Research, Karachi. On his return to America he joined, as visiting professor, the Divinity School at the University of Chicago. He accepted an Associate Professor’s post in Syracuse University in the Department of Religion, where he developed an Islamic Studies programme. From 1968 until his death on 17 May 1986, he was professor in the Department of Religion at Temple University, where he also established an Islamic Studies section. He was the first Muslim scholar in America who devoted himself to the study of comparative religion and Islam.