Scouring the World Wide Web, we came across this news article from 1986 archives reporting the murder of Dr. Faruqi and his wife on the day it happened. Truly, it was a sad day when this unfortunate incident happened. May Dr. Faruqi and his wife be received into His Jannah for their service to Islam, insha’allah.
AROUND THE NATION; Islamic Scholar and Wife Slain in Pennsylvania
Published: May 28, 1986
An Islamic scholar and his wife were stabbed to death early today and their daughter was seriously wounded.
Ismail al Faruqi, a 65-year-old professor at Temple University, and his 59-year-old wife, Lois, an art scholar, were found dead with multiple stab wounds in their home in this suburb of Philadelphia, the police said. Their 27-year-old daughter was stabbed in the chest and arms.
The weapon apparently was ”a 15-inch survival-type knife” found near the body of Professor al Faruqi, said Lieut. Robert Krauser of the Cheltenham Township police.
Sgt. Alan Butan said the Federal Bureau of Investigation was providing technical assistance to the police ”because of al Faruqi’s prominence in the Islamic world.” — AP
The Ismail Faruqi Award Ceremony was a bi-annual award given to International Islamic University of Malaysia scholars who produced outstanding and exemplary academic work, and was named after Dr. Ismail Raji al-Faruqi. At the time of this writing we are unsure whether this Award has been discontinued or still ongoing.
The following is part of the opening text by then Deputy Prime Minister Dato Seri Anwar Ibrahim on 28 February 1995, which summarily highlights the purpose of this Award.
This bi-annual award to IIU scholars who produce outstanding, excellent and exemplary academic work was established in honour of the memory of al-marhum Professor Ismail Raji al-Faruqi who during his lifetime had made profound and invaluable contributions not only to Islamic scholarship but to learning as a whole.
Indeed I was most privileged to have been given the opportunity of knowing him personally, as a leading scholar of his generation and as a friend. To be sure, he exacted uncompromising intellectual standards and lived by a strict regiment of academic discipline. But, at the same time, he was never lost in mere philosophical abstractions. He was acutely conscious of the realities of the time and the condition of the contemporary ummah. In this regard, he exemplified the conjunction between theoretical learning, ilm, and the righteous deeds, amal salih. He devoted the best years of his life, before his death under tragic circumstances, to the upliftment of the ummah, in inspiring and guiding its youth especially.
Perhaps his greatest legacy is the establishment of the International Institute of Islamic Thought. It was born out of his concern to revive the culture of learning in the hearts and the minds of the ummah. Through this institution he had enabled the mobilization of the intellectual resources of Muslims worldwide, bringing together scholars who had had Western education and those who had undergone the traditional Islamic disciplines.
In conferring these awards, we are recognizing scholars who have contributed towards the realization of al-marhum al-Faruqi’s vision.
Ataullah Siddiqui (ed.), “Islam and Other Faiths” by Isma’il Raji Al-Faruqi.
Leicester: The Islamic Foundation and IIIT, 1999, ISBN: 8603-7276-6
Review by Anne Sofie Roald
The very first glimpse of “Islam and other Faiths” by the late Isma’il Raji Faruqi filled me with excitement and curiosity. Here was an outstanding Muslim scholar venturing into a field that is at once virgin and full of intellectual promise. I had read only two books by him before: “Tawhid: Its Relevance for Thought and Life” and “The Islamization of Knowledge”. The contents of the former are in tune with the tenor of the papers which comprise the present book, being, inter alia, a philosophical statements of the unity of God and its implications. The Muslims in the western countries are truly in great need of studies such as the present one that would help them deconstruct and subsequently reconstruct the role they should play as minorities.
My study of the present collection of papers, which have been painstakingly selected and edited by Ataullah Siddiqui, reinforced the already positive impression that I had of the author. Faruqi stands out as one of the very few Muslim philosophers and scholars who earnestly attempted to interact with Islam’s two sister faiths, Judaism and Christianity, and articulated the theoretical foundations of such interaction.
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