Ingrid Mattson

Ingrid Mattson (born 24 August 1963) is a Canadian scholar of Islamic studies and interfaith activist, a professor holding the London and Windsor Community Chair in Islamic Studies at Huron University College at the University of Western Ontario. ^{1 2} The English and Urdu articles give her birthplace as Kingston, Ontario, while her Wikidata item and Yale University's 2026 honorary citation give Kitchener. ^{1 2}

She converted to Islam in 1987 during her university studies, and presided over the Islamic Society of North America from 2006 to 2010 — its first woman president, its first convert, and its first president from a non-Muslim-majority country; a 2010 New York Times article described her as "perhaps the most noticed figure among American Muslim women". ¹

Mattson was born in 1963 in Kingston, Ontario, the sixth of seven children, spent her childhood there and attended Catholic schools; she credits the Catholic women who educated her with providing "a fantastic education" and a place to explore her early spirituality. ¹ She studied philosophy and fine arts at the University of Waterloo from 1982 to 1987, spending the summer of 1986 as a visiting student in Paris, where she befriended West African students from a Sufi Muslim community; on reading the Qur'an she found "an awareness of God, for the first time since I was very young", and after returning to Waterloo she converted to Islam in 1987 and completed her combined bachelor's degrees in philosophy and fine arts. ¹

After graduating she spent more than a year in Pakistan, in 1987–1988, working with Afghan women refugees — as the Arabic article records — and there met and married her husband. ^{3 1} She then received her PhD in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations from the University of Chicago in 1999, with a focus on Islamic law and society. ¹

She served as professor of Islamic studies and Christian-Muslim relations at Hartford Seminary in Connecticut from 1998 to 2012, directed its MacDonald Center for the Study of Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations, and founded the first accredited graduate programme for Muslim chaplains in the United States. ^{1 3}

She was elected vice-president of the Islamic Society of North America in 2001 and president from 2006 to 2010; as president she established a national office for interfaith relations in Washington, D.C. in 2006, invited Rabbi Eric Yoffie, president of the Union for Reform Judaism, to address ISNA's annual convention in Chicago, and launched the "Twinning Program" with the Foundation for Ethnic Understanding and the "Jews and Muslims in America" programme with the Jewish Theological Seminary. ¹ She provided consultation to the administrations of Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama on policies regarding violent extremism, Muslim-American military service and the civil rights of Muslim Americans, and John O. Brennan publicly thanked her for her leadership. ¹

She is an original signatory of "A Common Word" and of the Amman Message, shared platforms with the Dalai Lama in Seattle (2008), Indiana (2010) and Chicago (2011), received an honorary doctorate from the Chicago Theological Seminary in 2012, and was awarded an honorary Doctor of Divinity by Yale University in 2026. ¹

Her best-known book is The Story of the Qur'an: Its History and Place in Muslim Life, chosen in 2012 by the National Endowment for the Humanities for its "Bridging Cultures" programme and now in a second edition. ¹ She founded and directs The Hurma Project, an initiative to help Muslim communities prevent and respond to spiritual and sexual abuse by people in positions of religious authority; she told Haute Hijab magazine she was motivated by repeatedly witnessing communities unable to acknowledge and deal with such situations. ¹ She has also worked with Peaceful Families, a Muslim social service agency that advocates against domestic violence and against interpretations said to permit violence to or discrimination against women. ¹

This section sets out positions and responses as reported in the sources. It is not a verdict by the museum.

Mattson advocates a greater public role for Muslim women as religious leaders: when she founded the Hartford chaplaincy programme she insisted it be open to women; she wears a hijab but argues that governments should have no authority to enforce religious dress or to ban it. ¹

She has been a critic of Islamic extremism since she first encountered the Taliban while working to educate Afghan refugee girls in Pakistan; after the September 11 attacks she published an article on Beliefnet, "American Muslims have a Special Obligation", and has since lectured and been interviewed many times to denounce violence in the name of Islam, condemning in a 2007 essay the "exclusivist, triumphalist, communal identities" that justify violent attacks on other groups. ¹

Her academic and leadership work has focused on fostering positive relationships between groups of differing faiths and on interfaith engagement for the public good, and her leadership in interfaith cooperation has been recognised by Burt Visotzky of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America. ¹

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