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.