Muhammad U. Faruque is the Inayat Malik Assistant Professor and a Taft Center Fellow at the University of Cincinnati. He also holds a Visiting Scholar position at Harvard University. He earned his PhD (with distinction) from the University of California, Berkeley, and served as Exchange Scholar at Harvard University and as George Ames Postdoctoral Fellow at Fordham University. He was also educated at the University of London and Tehran University. In addition to his formal college education, he has traveled throughout the world to learn and explore, and studied with many scholars in South Asia, Iran, Egypt, North Africa, Turkey, and Malaysia.

His award-winning book Sculpting the Self (University of Michigan Press, 2021) addresses “what it means to be human” in a secular, post-Enlightenment world by exploring notions of selfhood and subjectivity in Islamic and non-Islamic philosophical literatures, including modern philosophy and neuroscience. He is the author of three books and fifty academic articles, which have appeared (or are forthcoming) in numerous prestigious, peer-reviewed journals such as Philosophy East and West, Arabic Sciences and Philosophy (Cambridge), Sophia, Brill Journal of Sufi Studies, Religious Studies (Cambridge), Brill Journal of Islamic Ethics, and Ancient Philosophy. He has delivered lectures in many North American, European, Asian, and Middle Eastern universities. He gives public lectures on a wide range of topics such as climate change, spirituality, meditation, A.I., Islamic psychology, and Islam and the West. He is also a recipient of numerous awards and fellowships, including the prestigious Templeton Foundation Global Philosophy of Religion grant and the Title IV Grant, U.S. Dept. of Education.

While his past research has explored modern and premodern conceptions of selfhood and identity and their bearing on ethics, religion, and culture, his current project investigates whether or not Sufi philosophy and practice—as articulated in the School of Ibn ʿArabī—support and foster an active engagement toward the planet’s well-being and an ecologically viable way of life and vision. He is also at work on a book on A.I. and the ethical challenges of information technology. His edited volumes include From the Divine to the Human: Contemporary Islamic Thinkers on Evil, Suffering, and the Global Pandemic (Routledge, 2023) and A Cultural History of South Asian Literature, Volume 3: The Early Modern Age (1400-1700) (co-edited with S. Nair).

His interests and expertise encompass the history and theory of subjectivity, environmental humanities, religion and climate change, cross-cultural philosophy, gender hermeneutics, Sufism, Perso-Arabic mystical literature, Islamic philosophy and ethics, history and philosophy of science, Islamic Psychology, and Graeco-Arabica. He teaches courses on Islam and social justice issues, climate change, mysticism, philosophy, as well as on selfhood and identity.

In his personal life, he loves gardening (plant life fascinates him), spending time in nature, traveling, cooking, photography, and watching movies. He also has a passion for classical Indian (raag) and Persian music, and for art, music, and poetry in general.

He is also affiliated with the departments of Philosophy, Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, Environmental Studies, and the Religious Studies Certificate program.