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Lois Lamya' al-Faruqi
Montana-born Lois Ibsen al-Faruqi, who upon her conversion to Islam took the Muslim name Lamya', combined a life-long interest in music and musicology with a profound understanding of Islamic civilization to become an authentic bridge between East and West. Born July 25, 1926, she earned a bachelor of music degree from the University of Montana in 1948 and the following year was awarded a master of music degree from Indiana University.
After further graduate studies in Arabic, religion and Islam at McGill and Temple universities and the University of Pennsylvania, she took her Ph.D. from Syracuse University in 1974 in an interdisciplinary program concentrating on music, art and religion. She taught in several universities in the United States, including Butler, Temple, and Indiana, and abroad in Pakistan and the Philippines.
Her travel and lecture schedule was formidable, usually, though not always, carried out in conjunction with assignments accepted by her husband Dr. Isma'il Raji al-Faruqi. Her publications include more than 50 major articles, among them the authoritative An Annotated Glossary of Arabic Musical Terms, published in 1981, and the section on the Arts for The Cultural Atlas of Islam. The latter was completed just before her May 27, 1986 murder, with her husband, in their Wyncote, Pennsylvania home,...