Isma'il Raji Al-Faruqi (1339?1406 A.H./1921?1986 C.E.) is widely recognized as one of the foremost authorities of the twentieth century on Islam and comparative religion, and as one of the few Muslim scholars of his generation equally at home in Islam, Christianity, and Judaism, treated each on its own terms.

Born in Palestine, Al-Faruqi began his higher education at the American University in Beirut, where he earned a bachelor's degree in philosophy, before continuing his studies in the United States. He completed master's degrees in philosophy at Indiana University and Harvard University, and returned to Indiana University for his doctorate in philosophy. He then pursued postgraduate study in the Islamic sciences at Al-Azhar University in Cairo, and in Christianity and Judaism at McGill University in Montreal, a combination of formation that gave his later comparative work its distinctive authority.

His academic career spanned several major institutions. He served as a visiting professor of Islamic studies and scholar-in-residence at McGill University from 1958 to 1961, as a professor of Islamic studies at the Central Institute of Islamic Research in Karachi from 1961 to 1963, as a visiting professor of the history of religions at the University of Chicago from 1963 to 1964, as an associate professor of religion at Syracuse University from 1964 to 1968, and finally as a professor of religion at Temple University from 1968 until 1986.

Beyond the classroom, Al-Faruqi was an active institution-builder. He founded and chaired, for ten years, the Islamic Studies Group of the American Academy of Religion, served as vice-president of the Inter-Religious Peace Colloquium and of the Muslim-Jewish-Christian Conference, and was president of the American Islamic College in Chicago. He served on the editorial boards of several scholarly journals and as a visiting professor and advisor to universities throughout the Islamic world.

He wrote more than one hundred articles for scholarly journals and magazines and authored over twenty-five books, among them Historical Atlas of the Religions of the World, Trialogue of the Abrahamic Faiths, and Christian Ethics: A Historical and Systematic Analysis of Its Dominant Ideas, as well as the monumental Cultural Atlas of Islam, produced jointly with his wife, Dr. Lois Lamya Al-Faruqi. Al-Tawhid: Its Implications for Thought and Life, prepared for the instruction of Muslim youth and completed at Temple University in 1982, is regarded by many as the most complete expression of his thought.