Charles Joseph Adams

Charles J. Adams (1924–2011)was Emeritus Professor of Islamic Studies at McGill and for nearly 20 years the Director of the Institute of Islamic Studies there, died March 23 in Mesa, Arizona.^[1][2] Charles was born in Houston, Texas in 1924. His undergraduate education was at Baylor University, which was interrupted when he volunteered to serve in the Air Force during World War II as an airborne radio operator and mechanic. After the war he returned to Balyor to earn the B.A. In 1947 he entered graduate school at the University of Chicago, to study history of Religions with Joachim Wach. He later wrote a dissertation on “Nathan Söderblom As an Historian of Religion.” His long career at McGill University began when he joined the faculty in 1952. Adams the historian of religion turned his head more particularly toward Islam when, under a Ford Foundation Grant, he studied Islam in Pakistan. He returned to McGill to join the new Institute of Islamic Studies, and later served as its director from 1964 to 1980. It was there that he had his greatest influence as teacher and mentor for thirty-six years to students from across North America and indeed the world, many of them Muslims. Charles expressed to me the wish that he had published more during his active years, but what he had published was essential reading to scholars in the latter half of the twentieth century, before the academy in North America took much interest in the Islamic religion.

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