Thomas McElwain

POV|date=August 2008

Thomas McElwain is a Doctor of Philosophy who has lectured at the University of Turku in Finland and was a member of the faculty of the Department of Comparative Religion, as docent, at the University of Stockholm from at least 1982 to 2002. He is fluent in many languages, including biblical Hebrew and Arabic, and is one of the few remaining speakers of West Virginian Mingo.

A Shi'a Twelver Muslim (though he still considers himself Baptist)Clarifyme|date=March 2008 Islamic scholar who specializes in Islamic Christianity studies, he has written a series of works that compare Native American religion, Christianity, Judaism and Islam.

He was given the name "Ali Haydar" by Turkish Kizilbash in 1988, and he adopted it and has since used it interchangeably with his original name. He also claims to have visited personally with the Mahdi and to be the current head of a Sufi Order which has existed in the Appalachian Mountains for over 500 years.

Bibliography

*"Mythological Tales and the Allegany Seneca: A Study of the Socio-Religious Context of Traditional Oral Phenomena in an Iroquois Community" (1978) ISBN 91-22-00181-6
*"Our Kind of People: Identity, Community and Religion on Chestnut Ridge. A Study of Native Americans in Appalachia" (1981) ISBN 91-20-04726-6
*" [http://www.al-islam.org/islaminthebible/ Islam in the Bible] " (2002) ISBN 0-7541-0217-3
*"Sufism Bridging East and West: the Case of the Bektashis" in "Sufism in Europe and North America" ed. David Westerlund (2004)
*"Makkah at Dawn: Diary of a Pilgrimage" (2006)
*"The Beloved and I" (2006)

ee also

*List of Islamic scholars
*Islamic Christianity studies

External links

* [http://web.archive.org/web/20060427093623/http://www.globalresearch.org/view_article.php?aid=300498285 From Christianity to Islam: About this Book]
* [http://www.mingolanguage.org/texts/tom/20c_mingo.html The Use of the Mingo Language in the Last Half of the Twentieth Century]
* [http://web.archive.org/web/20070928135116/http://rosanna.com/mcelwain/ Short biography and text of "A path in time"]