Rabia Terri Harris
The founder of the Muslim Peace Fellowship launched MPF as an associate of the Fellowship of Reconciliation in 1994. MPF was the first Muslim organization specifically devoted to the theory and practice of Islamic nonviolence and continues as an organizing hub for Islamic peacebuilding and multireligious solidarity for justice. The child of a Jewish father and a Christian mother, Rabia embraced Islam in 1978, receiving her religious education through the Halveti-Jerrahi Tariqa, a traditional Turkish Sufi order. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in Religion from Princeton University, a Master of Arts in Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures from Columbia University, and a Graduate Certificate in Islamic Chaplaincy from Hartford Seminary. In 2009, as a result of her three decades of experience in spirituality and community service, she was chosen as the first president of the Association of Muslim Chaplains.
As a theorist and investigator in transformational Islam, Rabia writes extensively and has lectured and offered workshops nationally and internationally. She attributes her career’s greatest fulfillment to meeting a wide range of people that have continually opened her horizons over the years. Rabia was co-founder of the Community of Living Traditions at Stony Point Center, an Abrahamic residential community devoted to the pursuit of peace and justice through the practice of hospitality and the care of the earth. She is the editor of Fellowship magazine, a national peace and justice journal to which she’s applied her talents for more than a quarter-century.