Umar Faruq Abd Allah الدكتور عمر الفاروق عبد الله

Dr. Umar Faruq Abd Allah Wymann-Landgraf hafidhahullah (b. 1948, Columbus, Nebraska) is an American Muslim scholar of distinction. He embraced Islam in 1970 and subsequently immersed himself in the classical Islamic sciences within the line of traditional Sunni scholarship, including study with Sayyid Muhammad b. Alawi al-Maliki in Makka. He earned his PhD in Arabic and Islamic Studies from the University of Chicago in 1978. As Chair and Scholar-in-Residence at the Nawawi Foundation - a non-profit educational foundation based in Chicago - he has shaped much of the contemporary American Muslim intellectual landscape. His scholarship spans traditional Sunni theology, Islamic intellectual history, the encounter between Islamic and Western thought, and the Qur'anic and prophetic foundations of core Islamic concepts such as fitra. Among his notable works is al-Iman Fitra (644 pages), a deep study of the concept of fitra as presented in the Qur'an and Sunna, set in dialogue with the testimony of ancient and modern civilizations and philosophical traditions. His work has been particularly influential in shaping the theological discourse of Western Muslim communities.