uskudar.edu.tr 
Born in New Jersey in 1941, Bruce Lawrence earned his undergraduate degree at Princeton University, his master’s degree at Episcopal Theological School, and his doctorate at Yale University in History of Religions. Beginning to learn Arabic from age 17, Lawrence has been conducting research on Islamic history from that day to the present and has written numerous works. He is a Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Religion in Nancy and Jeffrey Marcus Humanities at Duke University. His areas of interest are the comperative study of religious movements, institutional Islam, especially in Asia, Indo-Persian Sufism, the religious masks of violence, contemporary Islam as Abrahamic faith and religious ideology. In 2012, he was awarded the “Service Award for DOST Islam” with his work entitled Quran: A Biography. He speaks Arabic, Urdu, Persian and French. Dr. Bruce Lawrence taught Islamic history at Duke University for 40 years till his retirement in 2011.
https://scholars.duke.edu/person/bbl