Islamic Studies Professor, Wife Slain; FBI Called In

A Temple University religion professor specializing in Islamic studies and his wife, an art scholar, were found stabbed to death early today in their suburban Philadelphia home, police said.

Cheltenham Township police were summoned by a frantic call from a woman, believed to be a married daughter, who reported an intruder, Lt. Detective Robert Krauser said.

Killed were Ismail al Faruqui, 65, and his wife, Lois, 59. Krauser said the weapon apparently was “a 15-inch survival-type knife” found near the man’s body.

The woman who called, Anmar el Zein, 27, was found on the kitchen floor bleeding profusely from knife wounds to the chest and both arms. She was listed in serious but stable condition at Rolling Hill Hospital, a spokeswoman said.

Ties With Arab World

FBI agents were called in to assist the investigation, apparently because Al Faruqui, born in Palestine in what is now Jaffa, Israel, had connections with the Arab world in his pursuit of his study and writings, police said.

Al Faruqui was found face down in the second-floor den and his wife was discovered on the floor of a shed adjacent to the kitchen.

Al Faruqui came to Temple in 1968 from Syracuse University, where he had been an associate professor of religion. He met his wife, an art historian, at Syracuse, where she earned her doctorate.

Temple spokesman George Ingram said Al Faruqui, a naturalized American citizen, is world-renowned for his work in Islamic religious studies.

Al Faruqui also taught at the Central Institute of Islamic Research in Karachi, Pakistan, and the Institute of Higher Arabic Studies, Cairo.

He graduated from American University in Beirut in 1941. He earned a master’s degree from Harvard University and his doctorate from Indiana University.

His wife wrote “Islam and Art.”

Ingram said the couple had five children.