I am a professor of religion specializing in Islam in the Department of Philosophy and Religion at the University of North Carolina Wilmington. I also serve as the co-coordinator of the Middle East and Islamic Studies minor and the director of the Graduate Liberal Studies. I received my Bachelor of Mathematics in Honours Computer Science in 1988 and my Bachelor of Arts in Religious Studies with the Middle East Studies Option in 1989 from the University of Waterloo in 1989. I completed my Master of Arts and Ph.D. specializing in Islam at the Centre for the Study of Religion at the University of Toronto in 1990 and 1996. During this period I taught courses on Islam at the University of Toronto and at York University. I then taught at Middlebury College, the University of Vermont, and Cornell University before coming to UNCW in 1997. I received tenure in 2003 and was promoted to associate professor, and in 2009 I was promoted to professor. My research, articles, and books deal with two major subjects: Islam in its first few centuries and the American forms of Islam.