The following petition was initiated on www.ipetitions.com on Feb. 25, 2008. By word of mouth and through a message on the Faculty Senate listserv, there were quickly 165 signatures, along with many personal expressions of support and outrage that our deeply respected colleague was being targeted by websites that promote hate. Prof. Ayoub has been serving a one-term endowed visiting professorship at the Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley and will receive this petition on March 25 when he visits campus.

On March 6, the Hartford Seminary announced that, “Mahmoud Ayoub, one of the pre-eminent scholars in Islam and interfaith dialogue in the United States and around the world, has been named Faculty Associate in Shi'ite Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations. . .”

——Joyce Lindorff, Vice-President of the Temple Association of University Professionals

Temple University Faculty Support Professor Mahmoud Ayoub

We, the undersigned members of the Temple University faculty, would like to express our full support of Dr. Mahmoud Mustafa Ayoub, Professor Emeritus of Islamic Studies and Comparative Religion. Because of Prof. Ayoub's esteemed reputation, an offer was made to endow a named Islamic Studies chair at Temple in his honor. Unfortunately this was not permitted to materialize, a situation we hope will be corrected in the near future. We deplore the slanderous attacks on him that subsequently appeared on anti-Islamic hate websites. We would like to thank Prof. Ayoub, a noted proponent of interreligious dialogue and understanding, for his many years as our valued colleague. We wish him well in his current position as Visiting Professor at the Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley, CA, and assure him of strong solidarity among his Temple colleagues who value open dialogue and free inquiry.

Mahmoud Ayoub earned a BA in Philosophy at the American University of Beirut, an MA in Religious Thought at the U. of Pennsylvania, and a Ph.D in the History of Religion at Harvard. Born in 1938 in south Lebanon, he is the author of many books in English and Arabic in the area of Islam and interreligious dialogue, including Redemptive Suffering in Islam and The Qur'an and Its Interpreters. He has published over 50 scholarly articles. His most recent works are Crisis of Muslim History: Religion and Politics in Early Islam, and Islam in Faith and History (both Oneworld Publications). 

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