Professor Mahmoud Mustafa Ayoub

Professor Mahmoud Mustafa Ayoub was born in Southern Lebanon, 1935.  He received a B.A. in Philosophy in 1964 at the American University in Beirut and soon after made his way over to the United States in 1966, going on to attain an M.A. in Religious Thought at the University of Pennsylvania .  Under the supervision of the esteemed German scholar, Professor Annemarie Schimmel, he went on to complete his PhD in the History of Religions in 1975. 

Today, Professor Ayoub is a Professor in the Department of Religion at Temple University in Philadelphia . He is also an adjunct professor at the Duncan Black Macdonald Centre , Hartford Seminary in Connecticut , and a research fellow at the Middle East Centre at the University of Pennsylvania .  Between 1997 to 2001, he taught at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College in Wyncote , Pennsylvania . Prior to these posts, Professor Ayoub was a lecturer of Religious Studies at the University of Alberta; an assistant professor of Religious Studies at the San Diego State University; a visiting professor at the Institute for Islamic Studies at McGill University; visiting professor at Balamand Greek Orthodox Seminary in Koura, Lebanon; and research associate at the Centre for Religious Studies at the University of Toronto.

In addition to his illustrious academic career, Professor Ayoub has also contributed immensely to the field of Interfaith Relations, having decades of experience to fall back on and giving more than sixty addresses on the subject.  He has served on the advisory board of the Jewish Chautaqua Society in New York , and has recently published a two-volume work on Christian-Muslim dialogue, Studies in Christian-Muslim Relations (Dirasat fi al-‘Alaqat al-Masihiyyah al-Islamiyyah)

Professor Ayoub has received many distinguished awards and scholarships, both for his community work as well as for his academic achievements. Among them is the Kent Doctoral Fellowship and the Canada Council Fellowship.  In 1994-95, he was awarded the Fulbright Fellowship for lecturing in Malaysia and continues to represent them in Egypt and Lebanon .

In 1998, Professor Ayoub helped establish a landmark post-graduate programme in Christian Muslim Relations and Comparative Religions at the Centre for Christian-Muslim Studies at the University of Balamand in Koura , Lebanon .  Not only was he instrumental in helping to wean the programme out of its infancy, but since 1999 he has been a visiting professor at the centre.

Professor Ayoub is also one of the founders of the Temple-Gajah Mahda Universities’ Comparative Religion Programme in Yogjakarta , Indonesia . Since its inception in 1999, Professor Ayoub has made frequent trips to the university.

Today, at the request of the United States Government, Professor Ayoub is serving as an ambassador to various parts of the Middle East , lecturing on American society and institutions, Interfaith Dialogue and Islam in America .

Professor Ayoub has published over fifty scholarly articles both as chapters in edited works as well as in esteemed academic refereed journals which include:

• The Muslim World.
• Journal of the American Oriental Society.
• Bulletin of the Institute of Middle Eastern Studies.
• Islamochristiana

He has authored several books, some of the most notable being:

• Redemptive Suffering in Islam.
• The Qur’an and Its Interpreters.
• The Crisis of Muslim History: Religion and Politics in Early Islam.
• Islam: Faith and History.
  
  

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