37th CONVOCATION PROGRAMME BOOK

41 The late Dr. Robert Dickson Crane (Faruq Abd Al Haqq) was born on March 26, 1929 in Cambridge, Massachusetts. At the age of 16 he joined Harvard University to study Russian. In 1948, he became the first American permitted to study in Occupied Germany, studied sociology of religion at the University of Munich. He continued his studies at the Northwestern University and later the Harvard Law School. Dr. Crane was married to Sigrid Rudel, a fellow student and had three children namely John, Marietta and Mark. Dr. Robert Crane earned his doctorate at Harvard Law School in 1959 with a specialty on comparative jurisprudence in the world religions. He wrote a dissertation in the mid-1950s entitled, The Political Origins of Heresy in the First Six Centuries of Christianity, at Northwestern University, where he earned his B.A summa cum laude with a 4.0 average. He was admitted to the District of Columbia Bar in 1960. During the 1960s Dr. Robert Crane was Richard Nixon’s principal advisor on foreign affairs and was appointed Deputy Director for Planning in the National Security Council. In the 1980s until he publicly embraced Islam, he was President Ronald Reagan’s US Ambassador to the United Arab Emirates. Meanwhile, in the 1990s he was the Editor in Chief of the Middle East Affairs Journal, the oldest peer-reviewed publication dedicated solely to the study of the Middle East. Since shortly after 9/11, Dr. Crane was the Chairman of the Board of the Centre for Understanding Islam and Muslims (CUIM) based in Basking Ridge, New Jersey, where the CUIM’s President, Muhammad Ali Chaudry, taught an online course using one-volume edition of their four-volume textbook, Islam and Muslims: Essence and Practice. From 2011 to 2015, Dr. Robert Crane was a full professor in the Qatar Foundation of Qatar Faculty of Islamic Studies (QFIS) and Director of its Centre for the Study of Islamic Thought and Muslim Societies which focused on the origins, state-of-play, and possible futures of the Arab Spring. In the 1980s Dr. Crane was the Director of Publications in the International Institute of Islamic thought (IIIT). Dr. Robert Dickson Crane is being recognised as one of the 500 influential Muslim figures of the world for the category of administration of religious affairs. In 2014, delivered a keynote address at the 3 rd International Seminar on Interfaith Harmony and Tolerance and Award Ceremony in IIUM. Dr. Robert Crane contributed to writing about Islam and Muslims in America. His influence on Nixon has become one of the significant achievements when he advised Nixon that “the most powerful force in the world against communism is Islam, and the most powerful force against terrorism could also be Islam.” He advised Nixon on world religions particularly in Islam. He also wrote hundreds of articles on his website, sharing his views on peace and justice. He was also the Board of Counselor for Centre for Economics and Social Justice, an organisation that believes in transcendent values which are common to believers in all the major faith that seek justice as an ideal and as a universal value for guiding improvements in any society or institution. Dr. Crane was an active writer for The American Muslim website. He was actively writing on current issues (about 500 articles) pertaining the Quran, war, war crimes, justice, politics, shariah, economy, interfaith issues, RECIPIENT OF HONORARY DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN CIVILISATIONAL DIALOGUE (POSTHUMOUS) BIOGRAPHY OF DR. ROBERT DICKSON CRANE @ FARUQ ÁBD AL HAQQ