Births on January 1

Ismail al-Faruqi, Palestinian-American philosopher and academic (d. 1986)

Ismaʻīl Rājī al-Fārūqī (Arabic: إسماعيل راجي الفاروقي January 1, 1921 – May 27, 1986) was a Palestinian-American philosopher. He spent several years at Al-Azhar University in Cairo, then taught at several universities in North America, including McGill University in Montreal. He was Professor of Religion at Temple University, where he founded and chaired the Islamic Studies program. Al-Faruqi was also the founder of the International Institute of Islamic Thought. He wrote over 100 articles for various scholarly journals and magazines in addition to 25 books, of the most notable being Christian Ethics: A Historical and Systematic Analysis of Its Dominant Ideas. He also established the Islamic Studies Group of the American Academy of Religion and chaired it for ten years. He served as the vice-president of the Inter-Religious Peace Colloquium, The Muslim-Jewish-Christian Conference and as the president of the American Islamic College in Chicago.