Dr. Umar Faruq Abd-Allah (Wymann-Landgraf) is an American Muslim who embraced Islam in 1970. He studied Arabic and Islamic studies at the University of Chicago and received his doctorate there in 1978. He taught at the Universities of Windsor (Ontario), Temple, Michigan, and King Abdul-Aziz (Jeddah). During several years abroad, he was able to study with a number of traditional Islamic scholars. He returned to the United States in 2000 to work with the Nawawi Foundation (Chicago), where he remained for more than a decade. He currently works under the auspices of The Oasis Initiative (Chicago). He is engaged in independent research, writing, lecturing, and teaching across the United States, Canada, Europe, West Africa, and elsewhere with a focus on Islamic theology, spirituality, law and legal theory, and history....Dr. Umar Faruq Abd-Allah (Wymann-Landgraf) is an American Muslim who embraced Islam in 1970. He studied Arabic and Islamic studies at the University of Chicago and received his doctorate there in 1978. He taught at the Universities of Windsor (Ontario), Temple, Michigan, and King Abdul-Aziz (Jeddah). During several years abroad, he was able to study with a number of traditional Islamic scholars. He returned to the United States in 2000 to work with the Nawawi Foundation (Chicago), where he remained for more than a decade. He currently works under the auspices of The Oasis Initiative (Chicago). He is engaged in independent research, writing, lecturing, and teaching across the United States, Canada, Europe, West Africa, and elsewhere with a focus on Islamic theology, spirituality, law and legal theory, and history. Among his written works are A Muslim in Victorian America: The Life of Alexander Russell Webb (Oxford University Press, 2006) and Malik and Medina: Islamic Legal Reasoning in the Formative Period (Brill, 2013). He has also authored a number of articles, among them Islam and the Cultural Imperative, Living Islam with Purpose, One God, Many Names, and Mercy, the Stamp of Creation.
