Sulayman Nyang

Sulayman S. Nyang

Scholar of African and Muslim affairs

"On Faith" panelist Sulayman S. Nyang teaches in the Department of African Studies at Howard University in Washington, D.C. A scholar of African and Muslim affairs, Nyang, who is a native of the Republic of the Gambia, also served as his homeland's deputy ambassador to seven Middle Eastern and North African countries from 1975-78. Except for those three years, Nyang has taught at Howard since 1972, serving as acting director of the African Studies Program from 1973-75 and from 1986-1993, as chairman of the Department of African Studies. In 1993, he became senior consultant on the African Voices Project of the Museum of Natural History of the Smithsonian Institution..In 1997, Nyang became the first scholar to be named the Henry Luce Professor for Abrahamic Religions at the University of Hartford and Hartford Seminary. From 1999 to 2002 Professor Nyang served as a principal investigator and co-director of the Muslims in the American Public Square (MAPS) project sponsored by the Pew Charitable Trust and housed at Georgetown University's Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding. Now a U.S. citizen, Nyang has written extensively on African, Islamic and Middle Eastern affairs .His most widely-known book is Islam, Christianity and African Identity. He has also authored or co-edited Religious Plurality in Africa, with Jacob Olupona; A Line in the Sand: Saudi Arabia's Role in the Gulf War, with Evans Heindricks; and Islam:Its Relevance Today, co-edited with Henry Thompson. Nyang also wrote Islam in the United States of America (1999). His latest work is Muslims' Place in the American Public Square. Hopes, Fears, and Aspirations (2004), jointly edited with Zahid Bukhari and John Esposito of Georgetown University, and Mumtaz Ahmad of Hampton University). Nyang, who holds a doctorate in government from the University of Virginia, also serves on the advisory boards of several national African and Muslim organizations and was the first American Muslim president of the Interfaith Conference of Metropolitan Washington, D.C. Close.

Sulayman S. Nyang

Scholar of African and Muslim affairs

"On Faith" panelist Sulayman S. Nyang teaches in the Department of African Studies at Howard University in Washington, D.C. A scholar of African and Muslim affairs, Nyang, who is a native of the Republic of the Gambia, also served as his homeland's deputy ambassador to seven Middle Eastern and North African countries from 1975-78. more »

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May 2007 Archives



May 2, 2007 8:32 AM

Role Models for Religious Minorities

The Mormons provide an example to any minority American religious group how to withstand suffering and how best to cultivate the challenges and threats of the past into future benefits and advantages.

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May 17, 2007 2:11 PM

For Muslims, a Distant Figure

Rev. Jerry Falwell, who was born on August 11, 1933, passed away on May 15 2007. He led services at Thomas Road Baptist Church, a megachurch in Lynchburg, Virginia. He changed affiliations from the more traditional Baptist Bible Fellowship International to the mainly conservative Southern Baptist Convention. He ended his self-identification with fundamentalism in favor of evangelicalism.

He will enter the history books as a religious and political force that sought to affect the direction of American religious and political history. Through his religious and social maneuvers as well as his political rhetoric, he helped create in American life a new way of getting traditional Christians, who heretofore were to a certain degree allergic to political matters, more receptive to the callings of his caravan. In doing so he thought and believed American life and thought would reverse the secularizing tendencies. Caught in the web of the Cold War and the culture war in his own country, he tried to exercise political influence among the politicians and spiritual magnetisms among the rank and file Christians of American society.

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May 19, 2007 8:58 AM

Happy to be of Service

I am satisfied with where I am now at this time for a variety of reasons.

First of all, I can testify that my life has been a field of activity that connects me to the larger population of humankind and in the course of this journey I have fed for the collective banking account of human knowledge.

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Posted by Sulayman Nyang | | Comments (17)


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