Mahmoud Ayoub (1935—)

Abstract

Mahmoud Ayoub was born into a devout Muslim family in 1935 at Ayu Qana (South Lebanon). He grew up in an environment where Christians and Muslims participated in each others’ daily life, in weddings, funerals and festivals. As a child, his parents sent him to a British Presbyterian missionary school, an experience which changed his whole life. As he remembers, ‘at the school I had a Christian upbringing, so my life was kind of influenced by both my parents’ deep piety and the missionary zeal of my school … the school authorities did not really have an educational programme for us, what they wanted to do mainly was to make us Christians and of course they did and that created a lot of tension between me and my family and particularly my father.’¹ The upbringing over the years in the Presbyterian Church convinced Ayoub that he needed to save the souls of his parents. In return they ‘wanted to make sure that I was a Muslim and part of the family, and also to save my soul’.² It was the spiritual insight of his mother that looked beyond these immediate complexes; she understood that her son was going through ‘an experience and he will return’.