Joseph E. B. Lumbard is Chair of the Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies Program at Brandeis University and a former adviser on interfaith affairs to the Jordanian Royal Court. He received his PhD and MPhil in Islamic Studies from Yale University, and a BA and MA in Religious Studies from The George Washington University. His research focuses upon Islamic intellectual traditions with an emphasis on Sufism and Islamic philosophy. He has written "Submission, Faith and Beauty, The Religion of Islam" and is the editor of Islam, Fundamentalism, and the Betrayal of Tradition (World Wisdom, 2009), a collection of essays that examines the religious, political and historical factors that have led to the rise of Islamic fundamentalism. He is currently working as an associate editor for the forthcoming HarperCollins Study Quran (2013).