Sumbul Ali-Karamali

Sumbul Ali-Karamali grew up in Southern California in an ethnically South Asian family. She earned her undergraduate degree in English, with Distinction, from Stanford University. After working as an editor in a publishing company, she attended law school and graduated with her J.D. from the University of California at Davis. She practiced corporate law in San Francisco for several years.

Although always a practicing Muslim, Sumbul began the formal study of Islam when she attended the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS). She graduated from SOAS with her L.L.M. in Islamic Law, with Distinction. She has taught Islamic law as a teaching assistant at the University of London, worked as a research associate at the Centre of Islamic and Middle Eastern Law in London, and lectured on Islam and Islamic law.

Sumbul is currently spending her time on speaking engagements, radio and television interviews, writing, raising her two children, and volunteering her time to various causes. She serves on the board of trustees of a nonprofit educational institution that teaches multicultural education and environmental education to children and youth. She also serves on the steering committee of Women in Islamic Spirituality and Equality (WISE), an initiative dedicated to mobilizing a movement for social justice.

"The adolescent dread of humiliating, nonconforming differences has fueled books and movies for decades and, as a Muslim teenager in Southern California in the late 1970s, I personified nonconformity. For years I cringed whenever I recalled a high school telephone conversation which terminated shortly after the young man on the other end demanded, “What do you mean you can’t come to the prom because of your religion?!

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“Post 9/11 has seen an explosion of publishing on Islam. For many, the question is who do I read if I only have a limited amount of time and want to know what and why Muslims believe what they believe? The Muslim Next Door is an excellent place to start. Sumbul Ali-Karamali presents Islam as a living and lived faith. She combines scholarship with an engaging and accessible style and frank self-criticism that crystallizes the faith and commitment of a majority of mainstream Muslims in its unity and diversity.”
— John L. Esposito, University Professor and Professor of Islamic Studies at Georgetown University