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Faculty Profiles
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About Us | Admissions | Programs | Faculty | Alumni/ae | Giving | Library | Bookstore | For Students | Search | Site Map | Contact Us Hartford
Seminary 77 Sherman
Street Hartford, CT 06105 860-509-9500 info@hartsem.edu
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The books that have influenced my thinking are many. Some were literary, and some academic. My intellectual and spiritual life has been a religious odyssey from Islam – the faith of my birth – to Fundamentalist Protestant Christianity, to Quakerism and back to Islam. Yet in a way I still live this long spiritual journey in my daily life. From Islam I continue to be guided by the Qur’an and the lives of some Sufi saints. Academically and intellectually my thinking has been profoundly influenced by my esteemed mentor the late Wilfred Cantwell Smith. His books and ideas, but above all, my years under his tutelage have helped me to return to my Islamic heritage, but with a new appreciation and a new critical mind. Smith made me a historian of religion, and the historian of religion lives a life of inner struggle with all reified absolutes. But it is a life that is more precious than all the precious stones of the world.