মাহমুদ আইয়ুব

Mahmoud M. Ayoub is currently Faculty Associate in Shi’ite Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations and Co-Director of the Duncan Black Macdonald Center for the Study of Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations at Hartford Seminary at Georgetown University. Ayoub is also a visiting professor at University of Balamand (Lebanon) and editorial consultant for the Oxford Dictionary of Islam. From 1988 to 2008 Ayoub was a Professor and director of Islamic Studies in the Department of Religion at Temple University in Philadelphia, an adjunct professor at Hartford Seminary in Connecticut, a research fellow at the Middle East Center at the University of Pennsylvania and a Tolson visiting professor at the Pacific School of Religion at Berkeley University. In 1998, Ayoub helped develop and start a graduate Master of Arts-level program in Muslim-Christian relations and comparative religion for the Centre for Christian-Muslim Studies at the University of Balamand in Lebanon. Ayoub has also taught at San Diego State University, the University of Toronto and McGill University. Mahmoud was born into a devout Muslim family on June 1, 1935, at Ain Qana (South Lebanon), a small town with an integrated religious population. His upbringing was socially integrated with events and people from both the Islamic and Christian religious faiths. Mahmoud Ayoub attended a British Presbyterian missionary school for the blind as a child. He would later join an American Southern Baptist Church seeking a more zealous approach of reaching others with the Gospel. During his university studies, he would eventually revert to Islam. Ayoub earned a Bachelor of Arts in philosophy from the American University of Beirut in 1964, a Master of Arts in religious thought from the University of Pennsylvania in 1966, and PhD in history of religion from Harvard University in 1975. He is also a Professor Emeritus at Temple University, USA. His publications include The Crisis of Muslim History: Religion and Politics in Early Islam, Islam: Faith and History, and The Qur’an and Its Interpreters, vol. 1-2, Redemptive Suffering In Islam, A Muslim View Of Christianity: Essays On Dialogue as well as numerous articles and book chapters.