Obituary: Mahmoud Mustafa Ayoub

Mahmoud Mustafa Ayoub

1935 – 2021

The Board of Directors of the Roothbert Fund, Inc. announces with regret the death of the prominent Shia scholar Mahmoud Mustafa Ayoub on October 31, 2021. Born in Ain Qana, South Lebanon in 1935, he lost his eyesight as a very young child. His initial education was in a British missionary school for the blind. He went on to earn a B.A. from the American University of Beirut in 1964. After coming to the U. S. he earned an M. A. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1966.

In 1966, Ayoub received the first of several grants from the Fund to support his work at Harvard Divinity School. He was awarded a Ph. D. in 1975. His dissertation, Redemptive Suffering in Islam: A Study of the Devotional Aspects of Ashura’ in Twelver Shiism in the Middle Ages was published as a book in 1978.

Over the course of his career, Ayoub taught at a number of institutions, including the University of Alberta, San Diego State University, University of Toronto, and McGill University. From 1988 to 2008 he was professor and director of Islamic Studies in the Department of Religion at Temple University. In 1998, he helped start a graduate-level program in Muslin-Christian relations and comparative religion at the University of Balamand in Lebanon. Later, he was an associate professor in Islam and Christian-Muslim relations at Hartford International University in Connecticut. After retiring he helped establish the Iman Ali’s Chair in Shia Studies and Dialog at Hartford.

His writings include The Qur’an and Its Interpreters (vol. 1 1984, vol. 2 1992), Studies in Christian-Muslim Relations (2000), Islam: Faith and History (2005), and many articles in academic journals.

On three occasions Ayoub was the discussion leader at a weekend retreat hosted by the Fund at Pendle Hill. In 1979, he and Jay Rothman led a conversation on Arab-Israeli Issues. In 1991, Ayoub and Charles Kimball discussed Islam. In 2002, one year after the attack on 9/11, he returned to talk about Islam, Faith, History and Reflection. Jim Rosengarten, who organized the latter weekend, recalled his remarkable warmth and that he “just kept giving and giving” when asked about his religion.

In a published tribute, the president of Hartford International University wrote that he was “an incredible scholar, an amazing professor, and a dear, dear man. Dr. Ayoub was loved by all and set an example for us each one about what it means to love one’s neighbor.”