Ibrahim Abdurrahman Farajajé
Dr. Ibrahim Abdurrahman Farajajé (December 19, 1952 – February 9, 2016), formerly known as Elias Frajajé-Jones, was a queer theologian, AIDS activist, scholar, spiritual leader, academic and professor. Farajajé was raised in Berkeley, California in an ethnically and religiously diverse environment. His parents were both education activists. He was one of the first black male students at Vassar College where he received a bachelor’s degree in religion in 1972. He went on to teach at Howard University School of Divinity in 1986. In the Eastern Orthodox Church, Farajajé was an ordained priest in the Santería religion. In 1995 he started as a faculty member at Starr King School for the Ministry. At Starr King, Farajajé was a provost and professor of cultural studies and Islamic studies until his death in 2016. Early life Farajajé grew up in a progressive, racially, and economically mixed neighborhood. His extended and immediate family was said to be religiously and ethnically mixed. He credits his parents for his knowledge on the importance of advocacy and social justice. Growing up, Farajajé had tutors for school to stay ahead and a second language tutor and learnt many languages like Spanish and French during this time. He is the first of his biological and adopted siblings. He credits his upbringing for his educational excellency, leadership skills, public speaking skills and his sense of social responsibility. Early activism Farajajé grew up exposed to many religions like various forms of Christianity, Protestant, Roman Catholic and Judaism. At age 13 he was exposed to Islam while attending boarding school and was exposed to Buddhism through his father. As a child he was baptized but was not exclusively in a particular faith or religion. He credits his professors at boarding school for his initial interest in Islam and in 1966-67 was the starting point of him self-identifying as an anti-Zionist and pro-Palestinian. Farajajé credits his high school education for exposing him to queerness in a positive light. He states in an interview with LGBTQ Religious Archives Network that he did not have a background of hearing anti-LGBTQ preachings when he started his path of becoming a religious scholar. He states that his mindset on queerness, sexuality, and gender was neutral which he credits to the fact that he was surrounded by queerness and learning about these issues in a neutral way. Farajajé stated in the same interview that his university experience at Vassar College was surrounded by women. He credits his feminist education to his time at Vassar College. On getting his degree in an Orthodox seminary at Oxford, Farajajé states that his goal was to study and learn, not to be ordained. In the late 1970s while finishing his dissertation in Switzerland, Farajajé became involved in a theatre collective involved in feminist, anarchist and queer spaces. On his time at Howard University, Farajajé speaks on wanting to teach at a black school after his experience of xenophobia in Switzerland. He moved back to the United States in 1985 and started teaching