Joseph E.B. Lumbard is currently a professor at The American University of Sharjah in the Department of Arabic and Translation Studies. A translator, commentary author and general editor for the Study Quran.
Born and raised in Washington D.C., Lumbard was brought up within the Episcopal Church, serving as an altar boy. In his teenage years he lost interest and he was introduced to Islam when a sophomore at George Washington University. He converted to Islam a year and a half later.
He wrote: “I realized that everything that I had been searching for within Christianity was also available within Islam…and that I would be following the message of Jesus just as fully within the Islamic tradition”.
He received a Ph.D. and M.Phil. in Islamic Studies from Yale University, an M.A. in Religious Studies and a B.A. from the George Washington University. In order to complement his Western university training, he studied Qur´an, Hadith, Sufism, and Islamic philosophy with traditional teachers in Morocco, Egypt, Yemen, and Iran. Before returning to the United States, Lumbard worked as Assistant Professor of Islamic Studies at the American University in Cairo.
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