John Esposito, pioneering scholar of Islam in the US, dies aged 86

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Esposito passed away on July 15, following a career spanning more than five decades in which he sought – through dozens of books and a lifetime of teaching – to correct Western misconceptions about Islam and to build lasting channels of dialogue between Muslims and the societies around them. Born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1940, Esposito trained under the renowned Palestinian-American Islamic scholar Isma’il Raji al-Faruqi, an intellectual apprenticeship that shaped his lifelong commitment to presenting Islam on its own terms rather than through the lens of Western anxieties. He spent nearly two decades teaching world religions at the College of the Holy Cross in Massachusetts, chairing its Department of Religious Studies, before moving to Georgetown University, where he would spend the rest of his career. At Georgetown, Esposito held the title of University Professor of Religion, International Affairs and Islamic Studies, and in 1993 he founded the Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding, later renamed the Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding. Under his direction, the centre grew into one of the world’s foremost institutions for interfaith dialogue, and he later launched the Bridge Initiative, a research project dedicated to tracking and challenging Islamophobia. Esposito’s scholarly output was prodigious even by academic standards: more than 50 books authored, co-authored or edited over his career, with his work translated into 35 languages. Among his best-known works were Islam: The Straight Path, The Islamic Threat: Myth or Reality?, What Everyone Needs to Know About Islam, The Future of Islam, and Islamophobia: The Challenge of Pluralism in the 21st Century. His 2007 book Who Speaks for Islam? What a Billion Muslims Really Think, co-authored with Dalia Mogahed and drawing on more than 50,000 interviews across more than 35 Muslim-majority countries, became one of the most widely cited studies of Muslim public opinion ever produced, offering a rare empirical counter to sweeping generalisations about the world’s then 1.6 billion Muslims. He also served as editor-in-chief of several landmark reference works, including The Oxford Dictionary of Islam, The Oxford History of Islam, and The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Islamic World. A practising Catholic throughout his life, Esposito often pointed to his own faith as the wellspring of his interest in interreligious understanding, arguing that deep conviction in one’s own tradition need not come at the expense of respect for another’s. He served as president of both the Middle East Studies Association of North America and the American Academy of Religion, and was honoured with the academy’s Martin E Marty Award for the Public Understanding of Religion, and Pakistan’s Quaid-e-Azam Award for Outstanding Contributions to Islamic Studies. Tributes poured in from across the Muslim world following news of his death. Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim, in a Facebook post, said his friendship with Esposito stretched back more than five decades to their first meeting in the early 1970s, describing him as a scholar who had built the intellectual foundations for a deeper Western understanding of Islam and calling him “a true friend of the Islamic world”. Anwar said that the scholar’s work carried particular weight in the years after the September 11 attacks, when public understanding of Islam was most urgently needed. Sami Al-Arian, a Palestinian-American academic who directs the Center for Islam and Global Affairs at Istanbul Sabahattin Zaim University, recalled Esposito visiting him repeatedly during the years he spent under house arrest in the US following a controversial “terrorism” case, before his eventual deportation to Turkiye in 2015. “I lost not only a dear friend, but one of the greatest scholars and humanitarians of our time,” Al-Arian wrote on social media, adding that Esposito “built bridges in an age of walls.” The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the largest Muslim civil rights organisation in the United States, also mourned his passing. National Executive Director Nihad Awad said Esposito had devoted his life to advancing an accurate understanding of Islam and Muslims “at a time when misinformation and prejudice too often dominated public discourse,” crediting his scholarship with helping educate generations of students, policymakers, journalists and religious leaders around the world. Awad described him as “not only an extraordinary academic, but also a compassionate friend and trusted voice”. Esposito is survived by his wife, Dr Jeanette P Esposito. 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