Warith Deen Madyun

Being able to share my experiences with such a diverse and vibrant group of students is a profound blessing and an amazing opportunity. I grew up in Newark, New Jersey, locally known as “Brick City.” In the city’s Central Ward, I learned perseverance, resilience, and survival. I spent my high school years in Avon, Connecticut, at the Avon Old Farms School. It was there where I fell in love with books, languages, and writing. In the City of Brotherly Love, I studied Arabic and Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania and found solace in prayer and contemplation. I traveled to Egypt in 2005. While there, I was too busy to visit the Great Pyramid of Giza, the Sphinx, or the Valley of Kings. But I did learn a lot about myself, my aspirations, and my purpose in life. It was in Egypt where I obtained a better understanding of spirituality and worship. I returned to America after my final journey to the Middle East, in 2008. From 2010 to 2015 I served as a Muslim Chaplain for the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections. I spent lots of time counseling and helping people from all levels of society who struggle with suicide, addiction, and violence. 

I love writing, reading, translating, publishing, and researching. However, this opportunity at Davidson is distinct. I get the chance to share a word of wisdom or two with future academics, politicians, writers, doctors, thinkers, and businesspeople. In addition to teaching about devotion, worship, and spirituality, I look forward to encouraging the students to be altruistic, to be sincerely concerned about the less fortunate, the underprivileged, the forgotten, and those people who have had different experiences than us, wherever they are, or whatever language they speak. So, overtime you will get to know more about me, my family, my books, and my life. But I really hope, more than anything, to encourage a generation of leaders who prioritize community service, charity, peace, love, and honesty over egocentrism, self-obsession, greed, indifference, lies, and willful ignorance. In 1968, Dr. Martin Luther King said, “Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.”