Professor Ali Ibrahim Kalyanaraman is a religious scholar and lecturer with degrees in History and also Law from U.C. Berkeley and U.C. Davis. He has traveled throughout the world and spent lengthy summers studying religion in both Iran and India.

He is a published author, "Martyrdom and Rebellion and glimpse into the Mappila community of South India", published by the U.C. Berkeley History Department. He also has some upcoming works "Ahlul Kufa" about the 2nd and 3rd generational community after Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) and their betrayal of Hussain and the remaining family of the Prophet (pbuh). He is also working on a compilation of his own poetry dedicated to the struggles of the Prophet's family (pbuh).

Biography

Dr. Kalyanaraman was born in India and migrated to the United States in his youth. Though his family initially traveled to various parts of the U.S., they eventually settled in the San Francisco Bay Area in California.

Born into a family belonging to the Priestly Brahmin Hindu Caste, he was exposed to Brahminical and Zoroastrian texts and philosophy at a young age. He studied Vedic and Sanskrit texts under Vadyar Kalyanaraman Shashtrigal in New Delhi, India for several years.

As he grew older, he became an excellent orator and expository speaker. His instructor was the award winning Forensics Speech and Debate Coach Tommie Lindsey. At one point he was ranked second in the state of California in speaking while only a Junior in High School.

He continued his religious and social studies away from institutions, authored articles for local journals and continued his community work. He was awarded by the Asian Pacific Council, the Annual Community Leader of the Year award in 1996, for his work in several documentary film pieces and his work to acknowledge the contributions of Filipino-Americans in the East Bay.

He is credited with founding All India Alliance, a watchdog group at U.C. Berkeley, as well as the now debunked Under-Represented Minorities Coalition.

He minored in Religious Studies and Tamil while at U.C. Berkeley. With Tamil he explored the works of Tiruvallavar. While exploring the Tirukural, Dr. Kalyanaraman began to look at other works such as the Bible and Adi Granth.

In 1996, while studying the Qu'ran, he converted to Islam. Subsequently adding the name Ibrahim for Prophet Abraham (pbuh) with his own.

He began to study Arabic and the texts of Islam seriously in 1998. He again traveled to India and then on to Southeast Asia, but this time, for Islamic sources of learning. He described his journeys as a contextualizing historical experience. He familiarized himself with Mughal history and texts and returned to take classes with Professors Irschick, Doumani and Leslie Pierce to augment his Islamic studies.

Concurrently he studied Early Christian thought and Judaism within U.C. Berkeley's History department.

His serious Islamic studies were primarily with Dr. Hamid Algar, Professor of Near Eastern and Islamic Studies at U.C. Berkeley, as well as accomplished author and translator of the works of Musava Lari and Ayatollah Khomeini.

He also studied fiqh, Islamic Jurisprudence initial with Sheikh Abdullah of Mauritania and the Maliki School of thought and subsequently with author and avid lecturer Hajj Rafic Labboun of Lebanon and the Jafari School.

For a 2 year span he served as the editor and chief of Al Bayan, an Islamic Journal.

During this period he immersed himself in Tarikh Al Tabari (The History of Tabari), and Al Mizan, the famous Tafseer of the Holy Qu'ran by Allama Tabatabai.

He would begin serious lecturing on the campus of U.C. Berkeley and later throughout Sacramento. He was assigned duties as Imam al Jummah close to West Sacramento, and later held basic Fiqh classes in Davis, teaching from the Risalat of Ayatollah Sistani.

While studying Legal History and Law, besides countless time put into working with inmates in the California Penal System and Immigrants in Cancellation of Removal Proceedings in the UC Davis Clinical Program, he also founded the Davis Chapeter of SALSA, the South Asian Law Students Association, and served as president for two years.

He continued his religios studies and also earned a Doctorate in Law, and later traveled to Iran several times to take seminar classes with such famous scholars as Ayatollah Shirazi and Ayatollah Jawadi Amuli.

After returning he taught seminar classes at UC Davis, Berkeley and also was a regular invited speaker at various Bay Area community colleges. He has also founded The City of Knowledge youth intervention for troubled bay area teens in need of postive role models and direction in the East Bay Area.

He now travels lecturing in the U.S. and Canada, primarily during the months of Ramadan and Muharram/Safar, while finishing up his latest book. He is a regular lecturer at Fatimiyya Mosque and Center in Hayward, California as well as SABA Center in San Jose. Though his popularity is growing in Toronto and Houston where he has been invited to speak. [1700]

Some of his speeches can be found at on-line at [1701], [1702]

"Ali Ibrahim is a rare breed of scholar who has the unique ability to stir both the passions and inner motivations of the masses that have attended his lectures, often creating the impetus needed for rapid advancement on a metaphysical level" -- Hakim Abdul Sabireen, Islamic Lecturer and Scholar, 2004.