Umar faruq abdullah wiki

American Islamic scholar (born 1948)

For the second caliph of Islam, see Omar.

Umar Faruq Abd-Allah (born Wymann-Landgraf; born 1948) is an American Islamic theologian, author, spiritual guide, and educator.^[1]

Biography

Umar Faruq Abd-Allah was born in 1948 in Columbus, Nebraska to a Protestant family.

He was raised in Athens, Georgia, where both of his parents worked as tutors at the University of Georgia.^[2] He received his PhD on the origins of Islamic law from the University of Chicago.^[1] Abd-Allah began his career as a teacher of Arabic and Islamic Studies and taught at different institutions in the United States and Canada.

He left America in 1982 to teach Arabic in Spain. Two years later, he was appointed to King Abdul-Aziz University's Department of Islamic Studies in Jeddah, where he conducted courses on Islamic studies and comparative religion for many years.

He studied under numerous traditional schol